shakespeare 7th annual de vere question debated studies … · 2015. 5. 18. · edward de vere,...

Vol.2:no.4 Summer 2003"Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments..."

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7th Annual De VereStudies Conference

Attendees treated to newinsights and breaking news

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Wilmot did notThe “first” authorship story

called possible Baconian hoax

On Saturday afternoon of the recently-concluded Edward deVere Studies Conference, Professor Daniel Wright reportedon his pursuit of evidence first uncovered by Dr. John

Rollett that suggests the so-called “Wilmot legend”—one of theoldest anti-Stratfordian reports of early doubts about the authen-ticity of William of Stratford as the Shakespeare poet-playwright—is a fraud. Professor Wright reported that his examination of thefacts uncovered by Dr. Rollett has led him to conclude that ifRollett’s signal discoveries can be borne out by subsequent tests,readers of anti-Stratfordian investigations into the ShakespeareAuthorship Question will have no choice but to form an entirelynew—and highly uncomplimentary—“take” on the role that

Shakespearequestion debatedat Smithsonian

By Nathan BacaBy Nathan BacaBy Nathan BacaBy Nathan BacaBy Nathan Baca

By Peter RushBy Peter RushBy Peter RushBy Peter RushBy Peter Rush

Prof. William Rubinstein spokeabout his experiences in writing apro-Oxford authorship article forHistory Today.

On April 19 the Smithsonian Institution sponsored a day-long debate pitting three prominent Stratfordian scholarsagainst three noted Oxfordian experts. It was one of—if not

the—best such debate that this reviewer is aware of. The rightpeople were in the room, lots of important issues were raised andresponded to by both sides, and each side had the opportunity to“throw its best stuff” at the other’s strongest arguments. I believethat the preponderance of strong, unrefuted arguments was madeby the Oxfordians, and that the Stratfordians left many crucialarguments unanswered, while the Stratfordians strongest suit wasa number of assertions—drawn largely from Alan Nelson’s forth-coming biography of Oxford—for which “proof” was promised,and should be demanded. The result was that—unlike some otherdebates—we were not left standing on “square one,” but rather theauthorship debate was advanced. Subsequent research and publi-cation by Oxfordians can greatly benefit from exposing the weak-ness of the best the Stratfordian side could throw at certain issues,and by shoring up several previously unknown or weakly identi-fied soft flanks in the Oxfordian dossier.

William Causey, a Washington, DC attorney who helped orga-nize the January 2002 Smithsonian debate, organized, promotedand moderated the event, and great credit is due him for attractingsuch a high quality of participants from both sides, for keeping theagenda relevant, lively, and moving along, and for establishing aneffective debate format where each issue was aired adequatelywithout the panelists being preoccupied with time constraints.

The Oxfordian side was represented by Ron Hess, author of atrilogy, The Dark Side of Shakespeare, the first volume of whichis now in print, with the next two due later this year; Joseph Sobran,well-known author of Alias Shakespeare; and Katherine Chiljan,editor of The Letters and Poems of Edward, Earl of Oxford. TheStratfordian side was presented by Stephen May, Prof. of Englishat Georgetown University and author of several books and numer-ous articles on Elizabethan and Renaissance poetry (includingOxford’s); Prof. Alan Nelson of UC-Berkeley, whose biography onthe Earl of Oxford, Monstrous Adversary, will appear later thisyear; and Irvin Matus, author of Shakespeare, In Fact. Diana Price,author of Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography, hailing fromneither camp, made opening and closing remarks, presenting the

The 2003 Edward de VereStudies Conference inPortland, Oregon proved

to be one of the best in its seven-year history. Over the course ofthree days of papers and paneldiscussions, some ground-breaking research was pre-sented, and in a few cases, newswas made. Several of the mostnewsworthy stories involved theauthorship debate itself and in-formation of interest to allShakespeareans.

The biggest news of theweekend came from ConferenceDirector Dr. Daniel Wright inhis presentation on the Rever-

Summer 2003Shakespeare Matters

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The purpose of the Shakespeare Fellowshipis to promote public awareness and acceptanceof the authorship of the Shakespeare Canon by

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), and further to encourage a high level of

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Shakespeare Matters welcomes articles, essays,commentary, book reviews, letters and news items.

Contributions should be reasonably concise and, whenappropriate, validated by peer review. The views expressed

by contributors do not necessarily reflect those of theFellowship as a literary and educational organization.

To the Editor:

I’d like to suggest a different interpre-tation of “Audrey” from that provided byAlex McNeil in his otherwise excellent ar-ticle on As You Like It. As McNeil notes,“Audrey” sounds too much like the Latinverb audire to be accidental, particularlyin this play where every name carries atleast a second, if not a third, meaning.Audire, however, can’t possibly refer to theplays, as McNeil (and Boyle) would have it,but to Touchstone/Shakespeare’s audi-ence—that is, his public audience.

First, audire means “to hear”—whichis what an audience does. Plays do not hear,they are heard. Second, a favorite word foraudience in Shakespeare’s time was “audi-tory” which is darn close to “Audrey.” Third,Audrey is portrayed as ignorant of poetryand almost everything else, lacking aware-ness of the finer things, a slut, hardly theview that the world’s greatest playwright,or posterity, could possibly have of theseelegant plays. Fourth, that Touchstone/Shakespeare wishes to marry his own playsmakes about as much sense as a man wish-ing to marry his own daughter, which iswhere you end up if you take the Audrey-as-plays metaphor to its logical conclusion.

There should be no doubt that theTouchstone/Audrey/William scenes wereadded late in the author’s career and that hewas using them to express something abouthis personal relationship to the theater,but what was that something? With Shake-speare, an anomaly among playwrights ofany age because he did not write for moneyor fame, we must always ask ourselves,why he wrote a particular thing? Every-thing he wrote was for a purpose. He wouldnot have introduced Touchstone, Audreyand William simply to make it clear to ahandful of insiders that he owned the plays,something they already knew.

In my view, he inserted this scene toexplain to his true audience, the so-called“gentlemen of the Inns of Court,” why playsthat he had written especially for themover the years were now being refashionedfor the great unwashed at the Globe andother public venues. I think that he actuallyrelished writing for the public. What play-wright would not? But he felt he had tomake some sort of explanation to this, hisfirst, best and truest audience, the one forwhom he pulled out all the stops, usedlegal metaphors and classical allusions,

argued for Equity Law and against out-dated blue laws, the one he invariablyturned to when he felt he had to explainhimself; and, not least, the one that fi-nanced his theater ventures once he’d spenthis inheritance and lost his credit.

First, in Act III, scene 3, Touchstonecompares himself to Ovid, who was exiledfrom the Court of Augustus and sent to liveamong Gothic goatherds, much as Oxfordwas exiled from Court for writing too openlyof Court secrets. Having lost his right toentertain the Court, now he must entertaingoatherds, i.e. the public. He asks Audrey(his “auditory”) if his features content her?Is he her favorite playwright? He wishesthis audience understood poetry. After afew wry comments on honesty he an-nounces that Sir Oliver Mar-text will marrythem. McNeil sees this Oliver as a mistake,since the name Oliver has already beenused for Orlando’s brother, but this mayactually be Shakespeare’s point, for Mar-text represents the bishops whose author-ity over plays performed for the publicwere being reinforced at the time thatthese scenes were probably inserted, andthe source of their authority was surelyRobert Cecil, the most likely model forOrlando’s stingy brother. Sir Oliver Mar-text is a combination of Cecil and thebishops, authorities who mar the poet’stext.

Next Jaques, who has been listening in

and commenting, offers to be the one whogives Audrey away so that the marriage willbe official. Although I agree that there is agreat deal of Oxford in Jaques, his namesuggests that his external model was thatironic commentator of the Court scene, SirJohn Harington, author of The Metamor-phosis of Ajax (a pun for “a jakes,” ortoilet). I don’t know what role Haringtonplayed with regard to Oxford’s produc-tions, but that there was a community ofliberal, educated noblemen who supportedOxford’s theater enterprise should be amatter of simple common sense andHarington’s biography would certainlymake him a candidate. Harington got introuble for his book, which was thought tosatirize Leicester, and was banished fromCourt, 1596-98, a period that correspondsto other changes in the play. The DNBquotes a letter to Harington written justbefore he embarked with Essex on the ill-fated Irish expedition, stating “that dam-nable uncovered honesty of yours will maryour fortunes,” and portraying him as onewho “considered himself a privileged per-son who might jest at will,” which soundsa lot like Jaques. Touchstone tells Jaques to“be covered,” in other words, to keep hisefforts on Oxford’s behalf private.

Act V, scene 1 is the addition whereTouchstone confronts William. Him toohe instructs to “be covered,” i.e.. to keepquiet. I don’t agree that William’s age,

Summer 2003 page 3Shakespeare Matters


From the EditorFrom the EditorFrom the EditorFrom the EditorFrom the Editor“twenty-five,” necessarily refers to the ac-tual age of Shakspere, although I can’tthink what else it means; surely it meanssomething. I doubt that Oxford was awareof Shakspere’s age or of anything abouthim apart from the usefulness of his “fairname” and that he was becoming an annoy-ance. Like Touchstone, William has somesort of claim on the public audience. Surelyit is his surname, which is never men-tioned, and just as surely Touchstone’sclaim is the greater. The plays are his whileonly the “fair name” belongs to William.

Touchstone’s questions define Williamas an ignorant country fool. He toys withWilliam, threatening him with witty re-prisals if he continues to take advantage ofhis identification with the plays because ofhis name. Diana Price has suggested thatShakspere was brokering the plays withOxford’s consent. This scene would seemto argue against Oxford having any con-nection of this sort with Shakspere, butsomeone was profiting by the sale andpublication of the bad quartos in the late90s. It may well have been Shakspere.

At the end when Touchstone refers toAudrey as “a poor virgin sir, an ill-favoredthing, sir, but mine own; a poor humor ofmine, sir, to take that that no man else will,”he is saying that unlike other Court poets,he is willing to entertain the ignorantmasses, virgins to history and the classics,thus excusing himself to his noble andeducated backers, who were distressed thatthe plays were being dumbed down for thepublic. That this was in fact the case wouldseem to be evident from those “bad quar-tos” in which the poetry has been elimi-nated. We can have no idea of how manyplays were actually dumbed down in thismanner since it’s likely that only a fewmade it into print. The First Folio, of course,concentrated on providing onlyShakespearean caviar for posterity.

One last point: this play has one ofthose marvelous scenes ( Act III, scene 2)where the mature Oxford as Jaques con-fronts his juvenile self as Orlando. Theirmutual disdain is most entertaining. Wesee something similar with Romeo andMercutio. Romeo and Orlando were prod-ucts of Oxford’s youth and the early ver-sions of his plays, while Mercutio and Jaqueswere creations of a matured Oxford.

Stephanie HughesEditor, THE OXFORDIANNyack, New York20 April 2003

Alex McNeil responds:Stephanie Hughes’s thoughtful letter

raises many points, to be sure. Her argu-ment that the character of Audrey is in-tended to represent Shakespeare’s “pub-lic” audience is certainly plausible, andmay even be correct.

I’d like to think, however, that perhapswe’re both right, and that Audrey, likemany of Shakespeare’s characters, maybe a composite. To me, there are compel-ling clues that Audrey does represent theplays themselves (as they existed in manu-script form), and not merely the publicaudience for them. The use of the word“foul” to describe Audrey, with its specialconnotation to marked-up written mat-ter, is suggestive, as is her own commentthat William has “no interest” in her, with“interest” suggesting a claim of owner-ship. As one orthodox commentator noted,Audrey is “a thing to be possessed.” If so,the author would more likely be seeking“possession” of his works (especially if theauthor, like Oxford, was not publicly as-sociated with them) than possession of hisaudience.

Although Ms. Hughes finds it nonsensi-cal—perhaps even incestuous—“thatTouchstone/Shakespeare wishes to marryhis own plays,” I do not. Obviously, I wasnot suggesting that the author was ex-pressing a desire to be physically intimatewith his manuscripts; I was suggestingthat among the traditional attributes ofmarriage, particularly in medieval times,were that the bride (Audrey) would takethe groom’s name, and would, in the eyesof the world, be considered his. It strikesme as far more logical that, in this sense,Audrey represents the plays rather thanthe audience. I don’t see how Touchstone/Shakespeare would have wanted to“marry” his audience.

As for Oliver Mar-text being “a mis-take,” yes. My point, however, was that theinsertion of a second character namedOliver was clear evidence that As You LikeIt was revised at some time, a point onwhich we both agree.

Ms. Hughes expresses “doubt that Ox-ford was aware of Shakspere’s age oranything about him.” Perhaps, sadly, we’llnever know. But I prefer to think thatOxford knew Shakspere well, and thattheir paths crossed sometime in 1589,when the Stratford man was 25, the sameage as William reports in his lone scene.[By the way, we do know that Shakspere ofStratford did know his own age, as hecorrectly states he’s in his 48th year whenhe gave his deposition in the Mountjoy-Bellott case.]

It is with great pleasure that we canannounce in this space that longtimeOxfordians Michael York and Sir DerekJacobi, two of the most distinguished Brit-ish stage and screen actors of the twentiethand twenty-first centuries, have agreed tojoin the Shakespeare Fellowship asLifetime Honorary Trustees.

“I have long believed that actors, due totheir intimate involvement with the lan-guage and emotions of Shakespeare’s char-acters, have a privileged insight with re-gard to the authorship issue,” commentedShakespeare Fellowship President Dr.Charles Berney. “Michael York and SirDerek Jacobi are certainly among the mostdistinguished Shakespearean actors in theworld today; both have played many of thecharacters, including Hamlet, the mostautobiographical of Oxford’s creations.Thus it is a special pleasure to welcomeMichael and Sir Derek to the ShakespeareFellowship as Honorary Lifetime Trustees.Their willingness to be so welcomed lendslustre both to the Oxfordian movementand to the Fellowship itself.”

In a year that has seen much good newson all fronts in the authorship debate,having Sir Derek and Michael take such abold public step just heartens us all themore. Public awareness of and interest inthe authorship story seems to pop up atevery turn, whether it’s the cover of theNew Yorker winking Marlowe (see page 5),Fellowship trustee Sarah Smith’s newacclaimed authorship novel ChasingShakespeares promoting Oxford (see page24), or even such Stratfordian efforts as theBBC documentary trying to make Stratmanreal (see page 6) and Prof. Alan Nelson’ssoon-to-be published biography trying torender Oxford dead (we’ll report on hisefforts in our next issue).

And then of course let us not forget theremarkable all-day authorship seminar atthe Smithsonian (see page 1) and the 7thAnnual Edward de Vere Studies Confer-ence breaking new research ground andmaking news (see page 1).

In short, these are exciting times to beengaged in this most fascinating issue. Weonly wish some of the stalwarts of the pastcould be with us to savor the moment.

Jacobi, York to serveas honorary trustees



16th Annual Oxford Day Banquet at MIT

Shakespeare Authorship Trust Conference in London

Boston area Oxfordians gath-ered for the 16th Annual OxfordDay Banquet on Friday, April 25.The event was held at the MITFaculty Club in Cambridge,affording a beautiful view of theCharles River and the Bostonskyline.

The dinner began with enter-tainment by professional singersStuart “Whitey” Rubinow andDave “The Rifleman” Harrisonwho wowed the crowd with aversion of Cole Porter’s “BrushUp Your Shakespeare,” featuringadditional lyrics composed byShakespeare Fellowship President—andbanquet host—Chuck Berney.

After dinner, Fellowship trustee SarahSmith, author of the new novel ChasingShakespeares (see review, page 24), spokeon the how “the academy” treats Shake-speare studies, and especially how it treats“Shakespeareans” who are outside the acad-emy. The topic followed naturally from thebasic “academics-in-search-of-the-truth”narrative of Chasing Shakespeares.

Also speaking briefly were composerJoseph Summer, a Massachusetts Ox-fordian who has honored Oxford with his“Oxford Songs,” and Sally Mosher, whoalso gave a harpsichord recital at the FirstChurch in Cambridge the following day(featuring, of course, William Byrd’s “Earlof Oxford’s March”).

Other events on Saturday were held atLesley College in Cambridge, where Shake-speare Matters editor Bill Boyle provided

an update on the Folger Library’sAshbourne Portrait (subject of acontinuing series of stories in thisnewsletter) and Richard Whalenmoderated a panel discussion on“the State of the Debate.”

After lunch, Alex and JillMcNeil entertained everyone with“Oxfordian Jeopardy,” an origi-nal version of the game show withall Shakespeare-related and Ox-ford-related content. RogerStritmatter, Mark Anderson andSarah Smith bravely agreed to bethe contestants. At the end of thecontest, Stritmatter was declared

the winner.Here’s the “Final Jeopardy” answer

(which, by the way, none of the contestantsgot right):

Category: Famous Last WordsAnswer: It’s the last word uttered by a

character in the First Folio (see below forcorrect response).

Correct Response: What is “peace” (fromCymbeline)?

A bit of Shakespeare Authorship his-tory was established earlier this summerwhen the Globe Theatre played host to 70persons on June 14-15 for the first-everGlobe-centered conference to exploreinsights into the authorship question. Theevent was sponsored by the ShakespeareAuthorship Trust and was presided overby Mark Rylance, the Globe’s ArtisticDirector.

During the two-day conference, casesfor William Shakspere, Lord Bacon, LordOxford and Christopher Marlowe wereadvanced, respectively, by Prof. WilliamRubinstein, Peter Dawkins, NicholasHagger and Michael Frohnsdorff—although Professor Rubinstein admittedthat his presentation in defense of the manfrom Stratford was an argument to whichhe, personally, could not subscribe. Still,he declared his determination to strivemightily to make the best case he couldwhile suppressing his own anti-Stratfordian convictions.

Several Americans attended the con-ference, including Professor Daniel Wrightof the Edward de Vere Studies Conference,Gerit Quealy of the Shakespeare Oxford

Society, and Stephen Moorer of the CarmelShake-Spear Festival (host of the forth-coming Shakespeare Fellowship Confer-ence). Oxfordian turnout, Dr. Wright re-ported to us, was somewhat disappointing,but he concluded that the conference wasstill a grand success as it provided a here-tofore-unrivalled occasion to meet manyBritish Baconians and Marlovians who werestrongly committed, through their ownorganizations and efforts, to exploring theShakespeare Authorship Question but who(like many Oxfordians) don’t often congre-gate with anti-Stratfordians apart fromtheir own kind.

According to Professor Wright, Nicho-las Hagger gave a creditable overview ofthe Oxfordian thesis, and he accorded himgood marks on his presentation. He alsooffered high praise to ProfessorRubinstein’s courageous effort to fairlyrepresent the Stratford man as a candidatefor the authorship of Shakespeare’s works,and he assessed Michael Frohnsdorff’sMarlovian case to be well done as well.

Wright reported, however, that he wasparticularly impressed with the delivery ofthe Baconian case by Peter Dawkins.

Dawkins—a widely-published author—was particularly skillful in offering a viewof the merit of the Baconian thesis that waslargely independent of reliance on thenotorious history of “cipher-revelations”in the Shakespeare texts for whichBaconians so often have been derided.Mark Rylance, himself a great admirer ofDawkins’ work, spoke glowingly ofDawkins and praised the significance ofhis contributions to the Shakespeare Au-thorship inquiry and to the formation ofhis own anti-Stratfordian convictions.

On Saturday night, conference attend-ees had an option of purchasing a ticket tosee Rylance and other actors at the Globeperform an all-male version of Richard theSecond—a novel interpretation of the playthat included some unexpected but highlyeffective comic moments that have con-tributed to winning the performance muchacclaim among reviewers in the Britishpress. The play concluded with a rousingdance that evoked thunderous applausethroughout the house, signifying, perhapsas well, happy days ahead for the inquisi-tion into the mystery of the identity of theman who wrought such works.

Alex and Jill McNeil presided over Oxfordian “JEOpardy”



In a happy and quite incredible coinci-dence, the same day the Boston Globepublished its review praising Sarah Smith’snovel, Chasing Shakespeares (plural) onthe case for Oxford, the New Yorker maga-zine arrived with a cover depicting“Shakespeares [plural] in the Park.”

On the cover is a drawing of CentralPark with seven Shakespeares. All have theface of the Stratford man in the monumentbut are dressed like typical New Yorkers.(The outdoor theater festival, Shakespearein the Park, has been held in Central Parkevery summer for years.)

The seven Shakespeares are jogging,bicycling, playing a bongo drum, eating apiece of pizza, rowing a boat, walking adog and reading the New York Daily News.

The headline at the top of the tabloid’sfront page is “Bloom to Mediate New Tem-pest, Asks ‘What’s in a Name?’” Yale Profes-sor Harold Bloom has published two popu-lar books on Shakespeare in recent years.Presumably, he’s expected to mediate thedebate over the author’s identity, a mostunlikely occurrence.

The main headline is “Will Writ Wrong,I Wrote Hamlet!” Under it, unfortunatelyfor Oxfordians but in much smaller type,

“Will Writ Wrong”New Yorker takes a bite of the authorship apple

The Chicago Oxford Society celebratedits third anniversary with a conference atthe Adler Planetarium on “Shakespeareand the Stars.” The guest lecturer was PeterUsher, professor emeritus of astronomyand astrophysics at Penn State University,who spoke on “Hamlet: A Cosmic Alle-gory.”

When the audience arrived, they found40 quotations on astronomy posted on thewalls of the auditorium. Christine Ramoswon the challenge to identify those byShakespeare.

After the lunch break, society directorBill Farina gave a slide presentation en-titled “Snippets of Shakespeare: Lear andthe Heavens.” And the next day, societymembers saw a performance of King Learby the Shakespeare Project of Chicago.

Three weeks later, Farina and MarionBuckley, co-founders of the Chicago Ox-ford Society, traveled to Massachusetts,where Farina gave his Oxfordian slide pre-sentation on The Tempest at the WellfleetPublic Library. The event, which drew fif-teen people, was sponsored by the Shake-speare Oxford Seminar on Cape Cod, nowin its tenth year. Farina, Buckley and Rich-ard Whalen, co-founder of the seminar, leda spirited discussion of the evidence forOxford as the true author. The seminargained five new members.

Chicago OxfordSociety

are the words “Confesses Marlowe.” Thecartoonist, Mark Ulriksen, must have beeninfluenced by the recent PBS TV programclaiming evidence for ChristopherMarlowe as the real author. –RFW

Measure for Mea-sure in real life

Katharine Hepburn - a Shakespearean woman

Barrie Maguire, with permission Barrie Maguire, with permission Barrie Maguire, with permission Barrie Maguire, with permission Barrie Maguire, with permission Globe Newspaper Co.Globe Newspaper Co.Globe Newspaper Co.Globe Newspaper Co.Globe Newspaper Co.

The headline in the Boston Globe read,“As hearing nears, plot of Shakespeare playcomes to mind.” The story was about UMassPresident William Bulger, who—with aCongressional hearing imminent about hisknowledge of the whereabouts of his fugi-tive brother “Whitey” Bulger—was think-ing about Measure for Measure, a play, thearticle said, that he had been thinking aboutsince he participated in a discussion aboutit last October; the discussion, of course,was the one co-sponsored by the Social LawLibrary and the Shakespeare Fellowship.

Bulger was seeing himself as Isabella vis-à-vis his brother’s plight. Others in Massa-chusetts might wonder whether he shouldhave been thinking more about Angelo, butin any event it is interesting to see howShakespeare matters in today’s world.

With the death of Katharine Hepburnthis past month the film world lost one ofits great stars. But our readers may not beaware that Hepburn played many Shakes-pearean roles in her career—all on thestage, and none ever filmed.

Among Hepburn’s stage roles wereCleopatra in A&C, Portia in Merchant,Beatrice in Much Ado, Viola in TwelfthNight, Rosalind in AYLI, Katherine inShrew, and Isabella in Measure. It’s a pitythat none of these performances was everfilmed, since—as we’re sure many wouldagree—she seemed throughout her careerto be a “Shakespearean woman.”

An interesting remembrance of her waspublished in the Boston Globe on July 2, inwhich a former Harvard student, JohnSpooner, involved with the Hasty Puddingshow and the annual “Woman of the Year”award, reminisces about his senior year—the year Hepburn won the award.

Spooner, playing a woman as is thetradition for the male students, recallsHepburn was the only real woman there—

and she was wearing pants.Spooner quotes her telling him, in an-

swer to his question on how to play femaleroles, “Read the female roles in Shake-speare. Everything you want to know aboutcharacter and theatre is in Shakespeare.”

Later that evening, after seeing Spoonerin action in a Rockette-style kickline, shecounseled the young would-be actor, “Isaid Shakespeare’s heroines, not Shake-speare’s fools.”

Spooner is today a money manager andan author.



Conference Update

A native of Detroit, MI, Earl attendedHarvard College 1962-66, and the Univer-sity of Michigan Medical School 1966-70.He moved to the Portland, Oregon area inthe 1970s, where he has held a variety ofhealth services positions, including co-founding and developing Epic SoftwareSystems, Inc., a modest enterprise with acomputer program designed to print emer-gency department and urgent care patientdischarge instructions and referral infor-mation (the system is used today by 300 to400 hospitals and clinics). He has alsoserved as a volunteer on the board of thelocal forestry and watershed environmen-tal organization, Headwaters, and servedfor two years with the Oregon NaturalResources Council.

Board nomineeEarl Showerman

As reported in our last issue, the Nomi-nating Committee has named a slate ofcandidates for the October election: AlexMcNeil for president, Roger Stritmatter,Steve Aucella and Earl Showerman fortrustees.

Candidates can also be nominated bypetition up until 45 days before the elec-tion. Petition nominations require 10 sig-natures of current Fellowship members,and should be received by August 25th at:The Shakespeare Fellowship, PO Box 561,Belmont, MA 02478. For further informa-tion contact Chuck Berney at the aboveaddress or by email: [email protected]@[email protected]@[email protected].

Trustee election newsEarl first became aware of the Shake-

speare authorship controversy in 1985 af-ter reading an intriguing review of CharltonOgburn’s book in Harvard Magazine.

Having lived in Ashland, Oregon, homeof the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Fes-tival, he had already become a theatredevotee, and, after encountering the au-thorship thesis, he found it was revelatoryto recognize the beautiful concurrencebetween the story of de Vere’s life and thethemes explored over and over again in theplays—the Italian connection, the com-edies of forgiveness and their rejectedwomen of virtue, the problem play Mea-sure for Measure, and especially TheWinter’s Tale, all came to new life with theunderstanding of Oxford’s complex andrich life, adding greatly to his appreciationof the plays and their historical and psy-chological significance.

During a fundraiser for the renovationof the superb outdoor Allen Pavillion the-atre, a chair was dedicated to Edward deVere. Although the Festival takes no offi-cial position on the authorship question, itdid host a Stratford vs. Oxford debate lastsummer between two actors in the com-pany. But the Tudor Guild bookstoredoesn’t carry any Oxfordian titles, so thereis still work to do.

Earl has found his involvement in theauthorship debate to be a wonderful storyto follow, and making informed convertsto Oxford’s case has been personallyextremely satisfying.

Shakespearedocumentarygoes CatholicThe long-awaited Michael Wood four-

part documentary In Search of Shake-speare began airing in June on the BBC inEngland. It will appear on PBS in the US inlate 2003 or early 2004.

Oxfordian Peter Dickson (Arlington,VA), who has been tracking this story foryears, has been keeping his Oxfordianfriends up to date via regular emails on thelatest news, press releases, reviews, and ofcourse his own take on what Wood’s effortsmean for the authorship debate.

Basically—as Dickson has been sayingfor years—the Wood documentary bringsto a head an internal contradiction withinthe Stratfordian paradigm that could in theend be its undoing. For, by accurately por-traying the Stratford man’s true familyheritage as recusant Catholics, Wood hasthrown down the gauntlet to all those inboth England and America who say that theShakespeare works themselves are not theproduct of a devout Catholic, but rather aprogressive, existential thinker—one soprogressive, in fact, that he is still consid-ered modern today. Further, the secretCatholic take on the Stratford man raisesthe serious question of how he could havesurvived politically in Elizabethan En-gland, given that the traditional story hashim publishing under his own name.

In one of his emails on this subjectDickson says, “Wood’s name will go downin history as the Stratfordian who put theStratford man’s crypto-Catholicism atcenter stage, pushing other Stratfordiansinto the orchestra pit ... and then pulled theroof of the theatre down all around.”

Wood himself, in an interview with TheGuardian on June 23, remarked, “Therewill almost certainly be plenty of peopleunwilling to incorporate into the nationalnarrative the idea of Shakespeare as a qui-etly sly Catholic dissident...” Further, Woodnotes, “Shakespeare had good reason to beso guarded and private, in an era wherespies were everywhere and any dissent ...was ruthlessly wiped out.”

And there’s the rub in this conundrum ofthe Stratford man’s Catholic roots: it con-flicts with the works, with England today,and with the real politique of ElizabethanEngland. We’ll have more in our next issue.

The Fellowship’s 2nd Annual Conference inCarmel, California continues to attract speak-ers who Oxfordians will not want to miss.

The latest additions to the scheduledslate of talks are William Causey of Washing-ton, DC, and Christopher Paul of Atlanta, GA.

Causey was the key organizer and mod-erator of the all-day authorship seminar atthe Smithsonian (see story, page 1). He alsoorganized the Whalen-Pasteur debate atthe Smithsonian in 2002. He will speak onhis experiences as a recent Oxfordian andhow he sees the debate developing today.

Paul is an Oxfordian researcher whohas published in The Oxfordian and Shake-speare Matters. He will be presenting find-ings of his most recent research, which weunderstand is “remarkable.” The early wordamong those in touch with Paul is that he

will present some provocative materialwhich could shake the debate to its core.Check in with the Fellowship’s web site atwww.shakespearefellowship.org www.shakespearefellowship.org www.shakespearefellowship.org www.shakespearefellowship.org www.shakespearefellowship.org in thecoming weeks for the latest word.

Others among the 20 scheduled speak-ers include authors Michael Brame andGina Popova, novelist Sarah Smith, plusOxfordian academics such as Dr. RogerStritmatter and Dr. Daniel Wright.

Full registrations are $195, which in-cludes all papers, three plays, and fourmeals; $95 for just papers and plays (nomeals); and a papers-only rate of $15/day or$50 for all four days. The plays are Tamingof the Shrew and Henry VI, Parts I and II.

Contact Fellowship President ChuckBerney at [email protected]@[email protected]@[email protected] or at 617-926-4552 for further information.



Baconians played in 20th-century efforts todisplace the man from Stratford from hisusurped perch as the writer we know asShakespeare.

The Wilmot legend is recorded in whatarguably is the most important work inthe library of famed Baconian SirEdwin Durning-Lawrence (1837-1914)—namely, the 1805 report by James CortonCowell to the Ipswich Philosophic Society.Cowell’s report detailed the fruitless 18th-century investigations into the mystery ofthe Stratford man by the Rev. James Wilmotof the Anglican parish at Barton-on-the-Heath, a parish church near Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Professor Wright reported that severalyears ago, Dr. Rollett (an Ipswich residentand noted anti-Stratfordian scholar) dis-covered, after extensive archival research,that there was no record of a James CortonCowell in local archives, nor was there anyrecord of an Ipswich Philosophic Societyto which Cowell purportedly gave his his-toric address! Moreover, he discoveredthat the putative president of that soci-ety—Arthur Cobbold, Esq. (whose name isappended to the cover of the Cowell re-port)—apparently never existed either.

This, Professor Wright reported, ledhim to the University of London to studyand transcribe the manuscript that Cowellsupposedly read to the Ipswich PhilosophicSociety (the full manuscript, which actu-ally consists of two papers, has never beenpublished). He was stunned to find that itwas aimed not so much to exposing a lackof evidence for Will Shakspere of Stratfordas a playwright, but rather to advancingthe case for Sir Francis Bacon as the authorof the works of Shakespeare.

This, Professor Wright reported,seemed to him remarkable. No recordsindicate that a public case for Bacon asShakespeare had ever been attempted priorto the mid-19th century (Delia Bacon pub-lished her famous Baconian tome, ThePhilosophy of the Plays of ShakespeareUnfolded, in 1857)—and yet, here was adocument, purportedly written over half acentury earlier, which made precisely thatclaim for Bacon, and in altogether unex-pected detail.

Why, Professor Wright wondered, hadSir Edwin (arguably the world’s leadingadvocate for Bacon as Shakespeare in thelate 19th and early 20th centuries) neverreported his possession of this historic

document or its contents to anyone? If hehad come into possession of the Cowellreport prior to authoring his two notablebooks on the Baconian case (both werepublished in the last years of his life) whyhad he made no mention of this landmarkCowell address to the Ipswich society ineither of those books? Why did he notdeclare in any of his books that he pos-sessed this document? Even if he came intopossession of this document after he pub-lished his books, why would he have made

no mention to anyone that he owned it—adocument that, beyond question, was thesingle most valuable manuscript in hislibrary and unquestionably the greatestacquisition of his life! Why did it takealmost 20 years after Sir Edwin’s death forProfessor Allardyce Nicoll, in a story forthe Times of London, to break the news ofthe existence of this manuscript when itwas discovered amidst the particulars ofSir Edwin’s library that his widow hadbequeathed to the University of London in1929?

These and scores of other questionsattend this problem, Professor Wright an-nounced. Apart from the mystery of howDurning-Lawrence came to possess thedocument and yet never said or wroteanything about it, one has to wonder (if themanuscript were authentic) how manypeople might have owned the Cowell pa-per prior to Sir Edwin’s receipt of it. Afterall, as Professor Wright reported, there areno records of its existence until Nicoll’saccount of its discovery in Sir Edwin’seffects in 1932 (a year after all the be-queathed documents in Sir Edwin’s li-

brary had been transferred to the Univer-sity of London), and no one, prior to itsdiscovery among Sir Edwin’s collections,had ever claimed to possess or even knowof it. How, and through whom, had it there-fore come into Sir Edwin’s possession?How did he know to whom to go for it?What had he paid for it? From whom, if hedid not buy it, did he acquire it, and whyhad neither he nor anyone else spoken ofits contents or even reported its existenceafter their acquisition of this manuscript—the most ancient and valuable Baconiandocument in existence?

To answer these questions, ProfessorWright suggested we return to questionsraised by Dr. Rollett’s investigation of theSuffolk archives and other repositoriesthat might (but don’t) point us to the indi-viduals with whom the document was firstassociated. Why, Professor Wright reiter-ated, do no records of an Ipswich Philo-sophic Society exist? Why are there norecords of Arthur Cobbold, the supposedPresident of the Ipswich Philosophic Soci-ety? Why are there no records to validatethe existence of James Corton Cowell—the putative scion of one of the most promi-nent families in Suffolk? And why is theonly record of the existence of Cowell, thefirst public proponent of the Baconianthesis of Shakespeare authorship, foundon a manuscript discovered in the hold-ings of Britain’s leading Baconian over acentury later?

Another speaker at the conference, Dr.William Rubinstein of the History Depart-ment of the University of Wales-Aberystwyth, who was intrigued by Profes-sor Wright’s presentation, also has joinedin the search for these elusive men andtheir alleged society, and he recently re-ported to Professor Wright that he, like Dr.Rollett, has been unable to discover anyrecords of these men or the Society in thevarious archives he has consulted sincehaving returned to Britain.

So what best accounts for this docu-ment, the oldest known document of a casepublicly made for Sir Francis Bacon as thewriter we know as Shakespeare?

Forgery, argues Professor Wright.Professor Wright acknowledges that a

definitive case for establishing the Cowellreport as a forgery has yet to be made, if itcan be made, given that the challenge mayrequire the task of proving several nega-tives. In his effort to pursue this question

Wilmot did not (cont’d from page 1)


The handwritten title pageto Cowell’s 1805 paper.



Conf. (cont’d from page 1)end John Wilmot (see sepa-rate article, “Wilmot didnot,” page 1). Wright re-ported on continuing re-search into a discoveryfirst made by Dr. JohnRollett of Ipswich, En-gland, namely that theentire story of Wilmot hav-ing searched for years forany news of the Stratfordman—and finding noth-ing—may have been a 20th-century fabrication. In twovisits to England, Dr.Wright has conformed Dr.Rollett’s breakthroughfindings and confirmed byhis own investigation oflocal and regional ar-chives that the IpswichPhilosophic Society—at which a paperfirst reporting on Wilmot’s findings in1805 was supposed to have been read—apparently never existed, and neither didthe President of the supposed society northe presenter of the Wilmot findings, JamesCorton Cowell.

Dr. Wright cautioned his audience thatfurther research and undertakings—such

as dating the paper and ink of the alleged1805 report—would be necessary, but hefelt that he and Dr. Rollett had made enoughprogress to date to make the story public.It has wide-reaching implications for allinvolved in the authorship debate, espe-cially, as Dr. Wright declared that he con-cludes it was early 20th-century Baconianswho probably fabricated the Wilmot story

to counteract the effect ofthe new and increasinglypopular Looney thesis thatidentified Oxford, and notBacon, as Shakespeare.

Among other highlightsof the 7th Annual Confer-ence was a performance ofthat famous play of duplic-ity and mistaken identity,Oscar Wilde’s The Impor-tance of Being Ernest, by theConcordia Student Players.The keynote address on Fri-day morning was deliveredby Concordia alumnus An-drew Werth, who spoke onthe importance of readingdedications to Elizabethanworks and how such dedica-tions can hold clues to thedoings of various Elizabe-

than writers, such as Oxford.The Awards Banquet was again cel-

ebrated at the Columbia Edgewater Coun-try Club. This year’s Scholarship Awardwas given to Dr. Deborah Bacon, ProfessorEmerita of English at the University ofMichigan, and the Achievement of Artsaward went to Tim Holcomb, Director ofthe Hampshire Shakespeare Company inAmherst, Massachusetts. The President ofConcordia University, Dr. CharlesSchlimpert, spoke briefly and welcomedeveryone back to Portland. Dr. CharlesBerney, President of the Shakespeare Fel-lowship and a great fan of Gilbert andSullivan, spoke after dinner on “Gilbertand Shakespeare,” relating some of Will-iam Gilbert’s career in the theatre to Shake-speare.

New research and publicationsNew research and publicationsNew research and publicationsNew research and publicationsNew research and publications

The conference opened on Thursdayevening with a presentation by Dr. MichaelBrame and Dr. Galina Popova, both profes-sors at the University of Washington, whoreported on their linguistic research intothe Shakespeare canon and Oxford’s knownwritings. Their talk, entitled “LinguisticEvidence for Authorship Identification:Oxford’s Pseudonyms,” was, to say the least,provocative. Their book, Shakespeare’sFingerprints, was reviewed in the last issueof Shakespeare Matters by Dr. RogerStritmatter, who concluded that the au-thors and their work must be reckonedwith by a mainstream that is used todismissing all things Oxfordian as “notscholarly.” Brame and Popova not only

During the latest Edward de Vere Stud-ies Conference at Concordia University,contributors provided over $10,000 indonations to finance efforts that ProfessorDaniel Wright has orchestrated and coor-dinated in order to see a memorial toEdward de Vere established in Poets’ Cor-ner at Westminster Abbey. While in En-gland for the first-ever Shakespeare Au-thorship Conference to be held at the GlobeTheatre, Professor Wright met with theVery Rev’d Dr. Wesley Carr, the Dean ofWestminster Abbey, to present him withnews of the many thousands of dollars thathe had raised for the memorial and topresent the dean with letters of endorse-ment for a de Vere memorial from suchleading scholars as Concordia UniversityPresident Dr Charles Schlimpert, Profes-sor Steven May, Dr. Roger Stritmatter,Professor Ren Draya and Professor Will-iam Rubinstein. Dr. Wright, in a luncheon

meeting with Sir Derek Jacobi, also gainedSir Derek’s pledge to assist in efforts to gainthe abbey’s official recognition of Edwardde Vere’s contribution to English letters.

The process of approving the petitionfor the memorial is one that now is in thehands of abbey authorities, and the successof the initiative is not guaranteed, but Dr.Wright reported that Dr. Carr was mostinterested in the appeal and very receptiveto his fellow clergyman’s presentation ofthe merits of the case for memorializing theheretofore-overlooked-and-neglected earl.

Professor Wright will report later thisyear—at the Oxfordian Studies seminar atConcordia University this August and at theShakespeare Fellowship conference inCarmel, California this October—on de-velopments in this effort to achieve lastingrecognition for Edward de Vere in England’smost sacred precinct commemorating itsliterary men and women.

EDVSC raises over $10,000 duringconference for Oxford Memorial

At the Awards Banquet on Saturday evening Concordia University President Dr.Charles Schlimpert (l) welcomed everyone, while Tim Holcomb (r), a ShakespeareFellowship trustee, was on hand to accept the Achievement in the Arts Award.




embrace Oxford as the author of Shake-speare, but they make a strong case for hisauthorship of other Elizabethan worksand generally argue that he was the lead-ing mind behind much of the advance-ment of culture in Elizabethan England.

Not all in attendance Thursday nightagreed, and there were some spirited ex-changes with members of the audienceabout the methodology employed in theirresearch. However, both Brame andPopova commented later how much theyenjoyed their first trip to Portland, re-marking that it was rewarding in numer-ous ways. In a statement to SM after theconference they said, “We were affordedthe opportunity of meeting and interact-ing with many astute Oxfordians, of airingour own views about Oxford’s multiplepseudonymity, of discussing a range ofheretical propositions, and most impor-tantly of witnessing the dissemination offresh ideas and new evidence relating toOxford’s life and works. We left the confer-ence with the fond wish that professors at

our university and others might open theirdoors and windows to the sweet smell ofveritas.”

In addition to Shakespeare’s Finger-prints, Brame and Popova will also be pub-lishing two more books (The Adventures ofFreeman Jones and Never andFor Ever) on Oxford as Shakespeare. Theywill both be presenting at the ShakespeareFellowship’s conference in Carmel, Cali-fornia (October 9th to 12th).

Another EDVSC presenter with a newbook out was Shakespeare FellowshipTrustee Sarah Smith of Brookline, Massa-chusetts. Her novel, Chasing Shakespeares,was published by Simon & Shuster in June.Smith announced that her publisher wasplanning to promote the book heavily, andit should be reviewed in major media in thecoming months. Chasing Shakespearesis a novel that features an Oxfordian fromBoston linked up with a skepticalStratfordian in a search for the truth abouta document that could settle the debate (itis reviewed on page 24).

Smith’s presentation, on Angel Day’s1586 The English Secretarie, posited thatDay’s work may be yet another instancewhere Oxford (to whom the book is dedi-cated) is the actual force—if not the au-thor—behind the scene.

Early Shakespeare reference foundEarly Shakespeare reference foundEarly Shakespeare reference foundEarly Shakespeare reference foundEarly Shakespeare reference found

Still another newsworthy presentationat the conference came from Dr. PaulAltrocchi, also a Trustee of the Shake-speare Fellowship, who, in preparing hispaper on historian William Camden’s Bri-tannia, came across a reference to Shake-speare that apparently no researcher—Stratfordian or anti-Stratfordian—hasever seen before.

Dr. Altrocchi showed slides of his find,a hand-written note in Latin which appearsunder the entry for the town of Stratford-on-Avon. The slides were made from theUMI (University Microfilms) copy of the1590 edition of Britannia, owned by the

Among the presenters this year were Marlovian John Baker (top left, speaking on the Derring manuscript of Henry IV), Randall Sherman (topright, presenting the research of Robert Detobel on Merchant of Venice), Merilee Karr (bottom left, speaking on the authorship and class politics),and Carole Sue Lipman (bottom right, speaking on a newly edited edition of Delia Bacon’s The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspeare Unfolded).



Confr’nce (cont’d from p. 9)Henry E. HuntingtonLibrary in California.

In his presentation inPortland Dr. Altrocchihad a transcription ofthe annotation—and atranslation based on thattranscription—that, itturns out, was not cor-rect, given the blurryquality of the annotationon the microfilm. Sincethe conference Dr.Altrocchi has obtained acopy made directly fromthe book owned by theHuntington. He reportshis findings in an articlebeginning on page 16 of this issue.

Oxford’s newOxford’s newOxford’s newOxford’s newOxford’s newcoat of armscoat of armscoat of armscoat of armscoat of arms

More significant research was pre-sented by Barbara Burris in her ongoingstudy of the Ashbourne portrait (Parts I toIV have already appeared in these pages;Part V will appear in our Fall 2003 issue).Burris’s presentation this year focused onher theory that the coat of arms now on thepainting had been added to the portrait bythe Trentham family in the early 17thcentury—perhaps as early as 1612. Fur-ther, Burris noted, it would be possible fora unique combination of the Trenthamarms and Oxford’s arms to have includedan eagle and excluded a boar (the FolgerShakespeare Library and experts it con-sulted had made much of the fact the coatof arms couldn’t possibly include Oxfordsince no boar was present).

But, Burris continued, it is a well-docu-mented— yet little known— fact that Ed-ward de Vere had changed his coat of armsin the 1580s, and replaced the boar crestwith an eagle crest. Therefore the absenceof a boar on the Ashbourne coat of arms—and the presence of a bird—can be ex-plained.

Burris believes that the Ashbournepainting was tampered with by the FolgerShakespeare Library sometime betweenthe 1940s and 1970s, and the new Oxfordeagle that had been there in combinationwith the Trentham shield was changed intoa Hamersley-like griffin.

While this theory is indeed controver-sial, one part of it is incontrovertible: thatEdward de Vere made extensive changes tohis heraldry in 1586 and apparently used

his new coat of arms (which dumped theblue boar and replaced it with an eagle orphoenix arising from a crown) for the restof his life. It made its first appearance inAngel Day’s The English Secretarie, andwas seen again in 1599 in John Farmer’sBook of Madrigals. For more about thechanges Oxford made to his coat of arms in1586, see Burris’s article beginning onpage 20.

Shakespeare andShakespeare andShakespeare andShakespeare andShakespeare andclass politicsclass politicsclass politicsclass politicsclass politics

Another extremely interesting presen-tation was given by Dr. Merilee Karr, amember of the EDVSC Advisory Board,who spoke on “Shakespeare Authorshipand Class Politics.” Dr. Karr covered sev-eral centuries of Shakespearean criticismwith an eye on trying to establish how andwhy Shakespeare became the cultural iconhe is today. As many are aware, the modernera of “Bardolatry” really started in 1769with the first Shakespeare Jubilee, held inStratford and organized by David Garrick.What many don’t realize about this semi-nal event, Karr reported, is that during theentire week of the Jubilee not one Shake-speare play was presented. The emphasiswas clearly on concretizing the life of thework-a-day actor who Garrick believedwrote them, rather than celebrating theworks themselves.

As Karr noted, this circumstance clearlyforeshadowed much that has followed bypeople who have sought to create an imageof the Stratford man as a writer when nosuch writer from Stratford, in any histori-cal documents, exists. It may go a long way,she continued, toward explaining why thetopic is still so sensitive with the class pride

issues surrounding thegreat Stratford com-moner as the nation’sgreatest writer being farmore important than anyinquiry into making surewho actually wrote theplays.

Carol Sue Lipman,President of the Shake-speare AuthorshipRoundtable, also gavesome historical perspec-tive on the debate in hertalk, “From Delia Baconto Elliott Baker.” Lipmanreported on a newabridged edition of DeliaBacon’s The Philosophy

of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded, pre-pared by Elliott Baker. Baker, who hasresearched and written on the authorshipfor more than 25 years, has produced anedition of Bacon’s seminal work that ismuch more accessible to the averagereader. Long-time Oxfordian Warren Hope(author of The Shakespeare Controversy)described Baker’s edition as “a little miracleof editing.” This edited edition can bepurchased under the title Shakespeare’sPhilosophy Unfolded from XLIBRIS (888-795-4274 x276) or through Barnes & Noble.

Some other papers also concerned withthe authorship debate itself included oneby William Niederkorn of The New YorkTimes, who reviewed how the Times hascovered the story for the past 150 years,complete with extensive clippings frompast years.

Professor William Rubenstein of the Uni-versity of Wales, author of a 2001 authorshipstory in the prestigious British magazineHistory Today, talked of the response to hisarticle and the fact the History Today evenpublished it—to record sales for the maga-zine. Professor Rubenstein has also writtenon such other unresolved controversies asthe JFK assassination and the murders byJack the Ripper.

Also related to the authorship debatewas Concordia faculty member ProfessorMatthew Becker’s talk on “The Not-so-FreeAcademy: Informal Observations on thePolitical Realities Surrounding Contro-versial Issues.” Becker’s topic focused onhow the search for truth can be confoundedby doctrinal and dogmatic rigidities,even—and maybe especially—in highereducation.

Accordingly, that such heretical no-tions as Shakespeare authorship have been

The State of the Debate panel was moderated by Bill Farina (c) of the Chicago OxfordSociety, with Richard Whalen (l) and Ken Kaplan (r) providing stories and insightsranging from academe to the Internet.



The Institute for Oxfordian Studiesat Concordia University

announces

The 2nd Annual Oxfordian Studies Seminar

August 17 – 23, 2003

Tuition is $995 and includes instructional costs, all books,classroom supplies, a week’s lodging on campus, all breakfastsand lunches, a luncheon cruise on the Willamette River aboard

the Portland Spirit, guided tours of Portland’s world-famousChinese Gardens, an evening at Powell’s City of Books, and

other delights.

For more details and to register,contact

Professor Daniel Wright,Director of the Institute for Oxfordian Studies

at [email protected]

allowed to exist—and tothrive—on this campusspeaks well for the Concor-dia system’s policy of let-ting issues be played out inthe public arena, even is-sues that invite contentiousdisagreement. This year, asin each of the last six, Con-cordia University’s Dean ofthe College of Arts and Sci-ences, Dr. Charles Kunert,gave the welcoming ad-dress on Friday morning,and, as always, was warmin his praise of ProfessorWright and all who trav-eled to Portland for the con-ference to pursue questionssurrounding the Shakespeare authorshipdebate.

State of the debateState of the debateState of the debateState of the debateState of the debate

Finally, the premier conference eventin discussing the authorship debate itselfwas the Friday morning panel discussion.The “State of the Debate” panelists in-cluded Richard Whalen, author of Shake-speare: Who was He?; William Farina,Founder and President of the ChicagoOxford Society; and Ken Kaplan, anOxfordian who has debated the issue ex-tensively on the Internet in various forums.Farina served as moderator, asking ques-tions of Whalen and Kaplan, and fieldingquestions for the panel from the audienceof almost 200 participants.

The panel was quite illuminating in ad-dressing issues familiar to all Oxfordians:how to broach the subject with strangers,what to say first, what not to say, and how toanswer the questions that come up mostoften (e.g., that all Oxfordians are snobs,“What about the post-1604 plays?”, and, ofcourse, “We have the plays anyway, so whocares?” etc.). Whalen’s review of the debateconcluded that much progress has been madewith so much recent publicity, and he en-couraged that we should keep the publicattention up, but “keep our cool” in doing so.Whalen himself spoke of how he maintainsa list of interested university professorsaround the country, and how that list hasgrown over the years (from under 10 in themid-1990s to nearly 125 today).

Kaplan had several interesting com-ments on how the debate has gone on theInternet, especially on the Usenet grouphumanities. lit. authors. shakespearehumanities. lit. authors. shakespearehumanities. lit. authors. shakespearehumanities. lit. authors. shakespearehumanities. lit. authors. shakespeare (agroup founded by Oxfordians in 1995, but

now dominated by a coordinated pack ofStratfordians who gang-tackle any newbiewho shows up and generally deal with allauthorship questions using ad hominemassaults ad nauseum).

Still, Kaplan said, it’s useful to keep thedialogue going, conceding points whenneed requires, but always staying cool andrebutting everything nonsensical or wrongthat one can. He mentioned how DianaPrice’s recent book, Shakespeare’s Unor-thodox Biography, has proved to be agreat contribution, and he noted in par-ticular how her husband, Pat Dooley—inKen’s estimation—had shown the hollow-ness of the Stratfordian attacks by patiently

arguing every pointthrown up at him. All theseexchanges can be foundon the Internet by going tothe Google archives fornewsgroups and searchingunder: humanities.lit.humanities.lit.humanities.lit.humanities.lit.humanities.lit.authors.shakespeareauthors.shakespeareauthors.shakespeareauthors.shakespeareauthors.shakespeare.

The works and OxfordThe works and OxfordThe works and OxfordThe works and OxfordThe works and Oxford

Other talks over theweekend concentrated onsome of the Shakespeareworks themselves, orevents in the life ofOxford.

Appearing Thursdayevening were Dr. Eric

Altschuler and William Jansen in a jointpresentation (“The Unknown Gentleman ofNicholas Yonge: Do We Know Him?”), inwhich they related how, in 1588, one Nicho-las Yonge published Musica Transalpnia, acollection of translations of 57 madrigaltexts—most from Italian but a few fromFrench. Yonge said the madrigals had beentranslated by some “unknown Gentleman.”Altschuler and Jansen suggested that thissecretive gentleman was none other thanOxford. The Pacific University ChambersSingers added to the presentation with sev-eral illustrative choral selections.

Stephanie Hughes, editor of The Oxfor-(Continued on page 12)

During a break some attendees and presenters share refreshments and stories. Leftto right are Ken Kaplan, Shakespeare Fellowship trustees Ted Story and Sarah Smith,Shakespeare Oxford Society trustee James Sherwood and Richard Whalen.



Smithsonian debate (continued from page 1)case developed in her book, that Shake-speare of Stratford was a play buyer, bro-ker, impresario, possibly an actor, but nota playwright, while maintaining that she isinclined away from thinking Oxford thereal author.

Rather than attempting a blow-by-blowreconstruction of the debate, I will com-ment on the issues that I feel were mostproductively discussed.

First, I should point out that the argu-ments of the two sides are not symmetrical.The authorship debate is not really aboutwhether Oxford or Shakspere of Stratfordwas Shakespeare, but about showing whyShakspere couldn’t have been Shake-speare, and then choosing the best candi-date from among the known contenders.Misdefined as Oxford v. Shakspere, argu-ments against Oxford become argumentsfor Shakspere. This is not true. No matterhow strong an argument might be againstthe Earl of Oxford, it in no way strengthensthe case for Shakspere, whose claimOxfordians obviously believe is indefen-sible no matter who the real author mightturn out to be.

On the other hand, the weaker the casefor Shakspere, the stronger the case forOxford, simply because no matter what

problems may be raised against Oxford,he remains by far the strongest contender,who would be almost universallyacclaimed were the claims for the Stratfordman to be generally recognized as invalid.Another time Oxfordians would do well tomake this point explicitly.

1. Strongly made Oxfordian points poorly1. Strongly made Oxfordian points poorly1. Strongly made Oxfordian points poorly1. Strongly made Oxfordian points poorly1. Strongly made Oxfordian points poorlycountered by the Stratfordians.countered by the Stratfordians.countered by the Stratfordians.countered by the Stratfordians.countered by the Stratfordians.

Shakespeare’s geographical knowledge.Shakespeare’s geographical knowledge.Shakespeare’s geographical knowledge.Shakespeare’s geographical knowledge.Shakespeare’s geographical knowledge.The weakness and state of denial of the

Stratfordians on this issue suggests they un-consciously recognize how fatal this argu-ment is. Sobran referred to a book from the1930s by Ernest Grillo, an Italian scholarwho was not an anti-Stratfordian, but whodocumented reasons that Shakespeare hadto have visited Italy, including his knowl-edge of Italian idioms and accents, specificphysical details, and other items in the playsset in Italy that couldn’t have been learnedfrom books or travelers. Hess pointed theaudience to his handout (partly based onLambin) with further citations of geographi-cal references in the plays that could onlyhave come from first-hand knowledge . TheStratfordians neither responded to norrefuted a single example.

Instead, Nelson and Matus ridiculed

the argument by caricaturing it as anassertion that no author could set a playin any venue he hadn’t visited, hence,Oxford couldn’t have written Hamlet orJulius Caesar because he never went toDenmark or classical Rome—an obtusemisstatement of the obvious fact that theonly plays Oxfordians claim are relevant tothis point are those set in Renaissance Italy.May cited several instances in the playswhere travelers make sea voyages betweennon-seaports in Italy as supposed proofthat Shakespeare was indifferent to geo-graphical accuracy. And May and Nelsonboth resorted to simple denial, with Nelsonstating, “The significance [of Shaksperenever traveling outside of England] is zero,”and May saying, “I disagree that there is any[geographical] detail shown in these plays[in reference to the items of evidence inHess’s handout]…. There’s nothing to them[the instances where Shakespeare includedaccurate local geographical detail].”

The Polonius as Burghley issue.The Polonius as Burghley issue.The Polonius as Burghley issue.The Polonius as Burghley issue.The Polonius as Burghley issue.Nelson first raised this issue, to pre-

emptively rebut it, saying that if Poloniuswere really “an obvious putdown ofBurghley, the censors would have caughtit.” This led to two tracks, one a back-and-forth on the issue of censorship, the other

dian, gave an overview of “Oxford’s LifeStory: What We Know and What We Don’tKnow.” Hughes, who has researched andwritten on Oxford for a number of years,emphasized that there is still much to bediscovered about Oxford and/or figured outfrom the records that have survived.

Randall Sherman gave an updated pre-sentation on the research of German re-searcher Robert Detobel into author’srights to their works in Elizabethan En-gland. Detobel had originally presentedhis research at the conference two yearsago, with particular mention of the stayingof publication of The Merchant of Venice asproof of Oxford’s authorship of the play.

Ramon Jimenez, an independentscholar from Berkeley, California and aBoard member of the Shakespeare OxfordSociety, spoke on Edmund Ironside, TheEnglish King, as most likely an early his-tory play by Oxford. Marlovian John Bakerof Centralia, Washington focused on thenotorious Dering manuscript of Henry IVand made an excellent case for its being anoriginal version of the Shakespeare playand not a later copy. Baker also explainedhow the published Folger edition of this

De Vere Conference (continued from p.11) manuscript had actually ducked the ques-tion of its being a bona fide early draftor version of the play. His essay on thistopic appears on his website: www2.www2.www2.www2.www2.localaccess.com/Marlowe/msh4.htmlocalaccess.com/Marlowe/msh4.htmlocalaccess.com/Marlowe/msh4.htmlocalaccess.com/Marlowe/msh4.htmlocalaccess.com/Marlowe/msh4.htm.

Dr. Ren Draya of Blackburn Collegeand Dr. Michael Delahoyde of WashingtonState University spoke back-to-back onThe Rape of Lucrece. Dr. Draya covered thedramatic elements of the poem itself, whileDr. Delahoyde pointed out interesting Ital-ian connections that only someone—i.e.Oxford—who had traveled to Italy couldhave been aware of.

Roger Stritmatter’s workshop, “Shake-speare and the King James Bible,” revis-ited a question first raised by acclaimedOregon fiction writer Richard Kennedy tothe effect that “Shakespeare” may havebeen associated with the King James Bibletranslation. Stritmatter is not convinced ofthis, but notes that de Vere could have beeninvolved in the translation of some parts—most probably the psalms. He invited theaudience to examine Psalm 46 and thewell-known numerologicaly embedded“Shake-Speare.” If this is a signature toPsalm 45 (first suggested by WilliamBoyle), he asked the audience to consider

how Psalm 45 begins: “My heart is inditinga good matter: I speak of the things whichI have made touching the King: my tongueis the pen of a ready writer.” He noted thatthe critical phrase “touching the King”(which has distinctive legal connotations)is unique to the King James translation ofthe psalm. Regarding de Vere and James,he also discussed the William Stirling play,Darius (1603)—a known “source” for TheTempest. Stritmatter suggested that KingJames is portrayed in Stirling’s play asAlexander the Conquerer, and de Vere, thefallen playwright, as the title character.

Those who couldn’t make it toConcordia this April should rememberthat there is also an Oxfordian Seminar onthe Concordia University campus eachAugust, running for a full week under thedirection of Dr. Wright (see the box onpage 11 for further details about attendingthis annual summer seminar). The princi-pal topic of this year’s seminar is “Hamlet:Oxford’s Biography?”

The 8th Annual Edward de Vere StudiesConference will be held at CU from April15th to 18th, 2004. Registrations are be-ing accepted even now, as enrollment islimited to 200 persons. —W.Boyle



the reasons for believing that Polonius wasa takeoff on Burghley. Again, the Stratfor-dian side sensed that to concede this point(despite the fact that many Stratfordiansdo concede it) was very damaging, as it wasfar more likely that if Burghley were beingsatirized, it is much more likely that Ox-ford could get away with it than the Strat-ford man.

Hess made the point several times thatmost Oxfordians believe that many ofOxford’s—i.e., Shakespeare’s—plays werefirst performed either in the homes of thenobility, or at the universities or semi-public places such as Blackfriars, none ofwhich would have involved the censors.The first time Hess brought this up, inarguing that The Winter’s Tale—first li-censed in 1610—could have been aroundfor many years before being licensed,Nelson astoundingly retorted that “I’vebeen in this business [for years], and I’venever heard that suggestion, and it seemsto me absolutely impossible.” Later, Hesscountered that it was in a book “recom-mended to me by my very good friendProfessor Nelson” by one Andrew Gurr,that detailed the several ways plays couldhave been written and bypass censorship,including performances in private homes.

But the strongest refutation of Nelson’sargument came—unintentionally—fromMatus, who, for reasons unclear to thisreviewer, cited how the name “Oldcastle”in Henry IV was forced by the censors tobe changed to “Falstaff” to disguise thereal- life person being referenced, and howin Merry Wives of Windsor, the name“Brooke” was changed to “Brooms” inthe Folio edition for the same reason. “Iwould believe that if they could censor thisman (the real-life Brooke)…they couldcertainly censor references to the mostpowerful figure second to Queen Eliza-beth,” Matus stated. Which is preciselywhat Oxfordians say was done, when, asChiljan pointed out, the original name“Corambis,” an obvious pun on Burghley’smotto “Cor Unam,” was changed toPolonius. In all three cases, the censorsforced the names to change, while leavingthe characterizations intact.

Hess also cited additional likely refer-ences to Burghley in Hamlet, including ref-erences to the “fishmonger business” (pillo-rying Burghley’s attempt to make Wednes-day a second fish day), the diet of worms (apun on the Diet of Worms, which was sum-moned in the year of Burghley’s birth), andthe close parallel between Polonius’s andBurghley’s duties for the sovereign.

The Cessation of New Source MaterialThe Cessation of New Source MaterialThe Cessation of New Source MaterialThe Cessation of New Source MaterialThe Cessation of New Source Materialafter 1603, and Other Dating Issues.after 1603, and Other Dating Issues.after 1603, and Other Dating Issues.after 1603, and Other Dating Issues.after 1603, and Other Dating Issues.

Chiljan and Sobran pointed out twotypes of source material abundant in theplays, all of which date from 1603 or ear-lier—and none later—strongly suggest-ing that the author incorporating thatmaterial ceased doing so just about thetime that Oxford died. Chiljan noted thatnumerous scientific discoveries and ob-servations made during the latter 1500sappear in the plays, and yet not one discov-

ery or observation post-1603, even thoughthe telescope and thermometer both ap-peared between 1604 and 1616, whenShakspere died.

Sobran had led off the debate by notingthat all the “published sources for the playsend in 1603.” He also noted that the firstallusion to Hamlet occurs in 1589, animpossibly early date for the Stratfordman to have written the play. He observedthat a number of bogus plays initially at-tributed to Shakespeare only began to ap-pear in 1605, the year after Oxford diedwhen, had he been the true author, he couldno longer protest. There is no record thatShakspere ever protested the misuse of hisname on these bogus plays.

None of these points was addressed bythe Stratfordian side.

The “Dogs That Didn’t Bark.”The “Dogs That Didn’t Bark.”The “Dogs That Didn’t Bark.”The “Dogs That Didn’t Bark.”The “Dogs That Didn’t Bark.”Hess and Chiljan provided three ex-

amples of “dogs that didn’t bark,” (a refer-ence to a Sherlock Holmes mystery, “Sil-ver Blaze,” solved by Holmes when herealizes that a dog that should have barkedat the culprit, but didn’t, proved that theculprit was known to the dog). Hess re-ferred to five people (William Camden,Michael Drayton, Thomas Greene, Dr. JohnHall [Shakspere’s son-in-law] and Dr. James

Cooke), all of whom knew Shakspere, butnot one of whom ever mentioned him asthe then well-known playwright WilliamShakespeare—dogs that “didn’t bark.”Hess noted the absolute silence that greetedShakspere’s death, that it was years laterthat anyone belatedly wrote about the de-parted playwright’s death, in stark con-trast to the contemporaneous hubbub thatwas made just a few weeks prior toShakspere’s death when the minor poetBeaumont died. “His corpse was paradedthroughout the streets of London by tens ofthousands and then buried in Westminsterwhereas Mr. Shaxpere is thrown into aboneyard and forgotten,” remarked Hess.

Chiljan detailed the very strong nega-tive evidence provided by William Camden,whom Matus himself cited for having re-ferred to Shakespeare the playwright in abook in 1605. In 1607 Camden publisheda revised edition of an earlier tome calledBritannia, which was a county by countytravelogue account of England in 1607. Init Camden has an entire chapter onWarwickshire and its principal town,Stratford-upon-Avon. Obviously familiarwith the existence of Shakespeare the play-wright just two years earlier, Camden makesno mention of Shakespeare in connectionwith Stratford—an inexplicable omissionhad Shakespeare the playwright hailedfrom Stratford.

To none of these points did the Stratfor-dian side choose to respond. Matus did re-spond to Sobran’s question, “Why does Shake-speare always seem so socially isolated, in areally teeming literary world, like Elizabe-than London, it’s just odd, isn’t it?” Matusreplied that, “Few people in London of thatperiod were less socially isolated than mem-bers of an acting company,” obtusely miss-ing Sobran’s point, which wasn’t thatShakspere was a hermit, but rather that noliterary or cultural figures ever report afirst-hand communication with, or any per-sonal knowledge of, Shakespeare the play-wright—despite his presumed presence onthe scene in London.

2. The Great Circle: Stratfordian2. The Great Circle: Stratfordian2. The Great Circle: Stratfordian2. The Great Circle: Stratfordian2. The Great Circle: StratfordianCircular Reasoning on Display.Circular Reasoning on Display.Circular Reasoning on Display.Circular Reasoning on Display.Circular Reasoning on Display.

Early in the debate, May gave the firstof many statements of what may be calledthe Great Circular Argument, one thatmisses the point of the debate, and assumesits own conclusion. “The basic problem isthis,” he asserted, “every work attributed toWilliam Shakespeare was attributed to him


“... the weaker the casethe weaker the casethe weaker the casethe weaker the casethe weaker the case

for Shakspere, the stron-for Shakspere, the stron-for Shakspere, the stron-for Shakspere, the stron-for Shakspere, the stron-

ger the case for Oxford,ger the case for Oxford,ger the case for Oxford,ger the case for Oxford,ger the case for Oxford,

simply because ... hesimply because ... hesimply because ... hesimply because ... hesimply because ... he

remains by far theremains by far theremains by far theremains by far theremains by far the

strongest contender...”strongest contender...”strongest contender...”strongest contender...”strongest contender...”



during his lifetime, or within sevenyears of his death. Not one of thoseworks is attributed in any way byanyone to the Earl of Oxford.” Some-how, the fact escapes them that theOxfordian case rests on the premisethat “William Shakespeare” is apseudonym. If the name is a pseud-onym, then is it any mystery that allworks by this author appear underthat pseudonym? Did any of MarkTwain’s works appear under the nameSamuel Clemens? If not, would theexistence of someone named MarkTwain prove that he was the author?The Stratfordian argument wouldappear to say so. May assumes thatShakspere was the playwright, anduses that assumption to prove that,indeed, such was the case.

Nelson subsequently pro-pounded a variant of this argument,discussing the issue of licensing andpublication of the plays. Shakespeare“did not write for money…. Shake-speare was a member of the Com-pany, he wrote for his Company, hisincome, the income of his Company,the entire Company, depended ontheir plays being performed before thepublic, so it was really important that oncea play was written, it was acted.” This wasall stated as if it was settled fact. Again, theissue is that the Oxfordian side questionswhether Shakspere of Stratford was, infact, a playwright. Not one shred of evi-dence suggests that the man from Strat-ford wrote for any play company. Evidenceneeds to be presented to make the case.Nelson asserted it without proof.

Nelson returned to this line of argu-ment later on, asserting that the plays whichfirst appeared in print in the First Folio(i.e., those not previously published) “wereowned by the play company, by the King’sMen.” If Nelson has discovered some pre-viously unknown document establishingthat the “new” plays were conclusively inthe possession of the King’s Men, this is thebiggest story in Shakespearean scholar-ship in two centuries, and would definitelystrengthen the case for the Stratford man.

3. Most Preposterous Stratfordian3. Most Preposterous Stratfordian3. Most Preposterous Stratfordian3. Most Preposterous Stratfordian3. Most Preposterous StratfordianAssertion: Dating Assertion: Dating Assertion: Dating Assertion: Dating Assertion: Dating The TempestThe TempestThe TempestThe TempestThe Tempest.....

Matus’s first point in the debate wasthat the reference in The Tempest to the“still-vexed Bermoothes” was based di-rectly on reports of a 1609 shipwreck on

Bermuda. Chiljan disputed Matus’s cita-tion of a book by a survivor of that ship-wreck, William Strachey, pointing out thatit wasn’t published until 1625. She alsonoted that there were many shipwrecks inthe 1580s and 1590s and that there is noevidence that Shakespeare based The Tem-pest on the 1609 one.

However, no panelists sought to showMatus’s argument to be absurd by simplyreading the line about the “still-vexedBermoothes” in context. It occurs in apassage where Ariel is recounting a previ-ous errand he did for Prospero. The refer-ence to “Bermoothes” has no connectionto the shipwreck that opens The Tempest.That the shipwreck has occurred in theMediterranean is confirmed when it isannounced that the other four ships thathad accompanied it turned back to theirMediterranean port of embarkation.

4. Strongest Stratfordian Point:4. Strongest Stratfordian Point:4. Strongest Stratfordian Point:4. Strongest Stratfordian Point:4. Strongest Stratfordian Point:Why Would Oxford Write for AnotherWhy Would Oxford Write for AnotherWhy Would Oxford Write for AnotherWhy Would Oxford Write for AnotherWhy Would Oxford Write for AnotherCompany?Company?Company?Company?Company?

Nelson stated that Oxford had his ownacting company, Oxford’s Men, from 1580until 1602 or 1603. He asserted that hedoesn’t find it impossible to believe thatOxford wrote plays, certainly corroborated

by George Putnam’s reference thatOxford wrote comedies, but that “ifhe wrote plays, it would have beenfor his own company, it would nothave been for another company.”Returning to this theme a bit later,he added, “There is therefore noreason, since he had his own com-pany, that he should be writing foranother company with which he hadnothing to do. There is no connec-tion whatsoever between Oxford andany aspect of the Lord Chamberlain’sMen or the King’s Men,” the latterShakespeare’s alleged company.

While no Oxfordian directly re-sponded to this, an answer could bethat Oxford wrote mainly for privateperformances—as Hess indicated—and all companies were then freeto perform them.

5. Potentially Damaging Strat-5. Potentially Damaging Strat-5. Potentially Damaging Strat-5. Potentially Damaging Strat-5. Potentially Damaging Strat-fordian Assertions Awaiting Proof.fordian Assertions Awaiting Proof.fordian Assertions Awaiting Proof.fordian Assertions Awaiting Proof.fordian Assertions Awaiting Proof.

The Stratfordians argued severalpoints not previously known to thisreviewer, for which they claimedproofs not presented during the de-bate. Nelson asserted, contrary to pre-

vious belief on this point, that Oxford did notattend Cambridge for more than one yearand never attended Oxford, and that there’sno evidence he ever studied at the Inns ofCourt. Nelson referred to his forthcomingbook for “absolute proof” of this.

May repeatedly stressed the point thatOxford’s known literary work was so farbelow Shakespeare’s in quality that, “I sim-ply couldn’t see any hint of that in anythingwritten by the Earl of Oxford.” Later, hewent further, stating that “If you readOxford’s poetry, and consider that the lightyears of development between that andShakespeare could have taken place in thehighly condensed time that the Oxfordiansmust commit to it, I simply find it incred-ible, there’s just nothing there that evensuggests the germ of a Shakespeare.”

Chiljan countered May by pointing outthat most of Oxford’s surviving poemsunder his own name were written by him asa teenager, since they appeared in a vol-ume published in 1576 (when Oxford was26) but compiled 10 years earlier. Maychallenged this by saying that some poemswere added after an initial set were com-piled, but provided no proof that Oxford’spoems were among those added later.

Sobran responded, “These are verypersonal esthetic judgments of Alan Nelson,

Smithsonian (cont’d from page 13)

In bottom photo are Joseph Sobran (l) and Prof. Alan Nelson(r) sharing the podium during a 1997 authorship debate inSeattle. Above is Prof. Stephen May speaking at the 2002Edward de Vere Studies Conference in Portland, Oregon.



they prove nothing about thequality of Oxford’s writingsone way or the other.” Under-cutting his own argument,Nelson conceded, albeit “tomy disappointment,” that“Oxford is a competent, mod-erately experimental poet,”while May, after his “lightyears” statement, added“which is not to say that hewasn’t a competent mid-cen-tury poet, I think he was.” Whyan admittedly “competent”poet, almost all of whoseknown literary work datesfrom his youth, couldn’t havemorphed into a great artist isa question the Stratfordiansfailed to address. Some elabo-rated demonstration by theStratfordians of the hopeless inferiority ofOxford’s literary work would be requiredto advance this argument beyond the realmof mere opinion.

Debate also occurred over Oxford’ssurviving letters, almost all written to LordBurghley, which Nelson characterized asdisplaying “about the linguistic compe-tence of our president,” to which Matusretorted “I think that’s too cruel to Bush.”Nelson said the letters were so boring hecontemplated recommending readers ofhis book skip the chapters quoting fromthem, to which Hess rejoined, “I find thewritings of Shakspere to be infinitely moreboring than Oxford’s.” Chiljan said thatthere are passages in some of the lettersthat seem to hark back to lines in severalplays, citing in particular a passage aboutmaking substance out of a shadow, a meta-phor which recurs in Richard II, RichardIII, Titus Andronicus and Sonnet 37.

6. Points Debated and Left Unresolved.6. Points Debated and Left Unresolved.6. Points Debated and Left Unresolved.6. Points Debated and Left Unresolved.6. Points Debated and Left Unresolved.

Several points were asserted by oneside, contested by the other, and left unre-solved, in need of further evidence on bothsides. One such example was Hess’s claimthat Lord Burghley was “one of the greatestkleptocrats of his time” who was “essen-tially ruling by thievery.” He continuedthat, “tons of evidence sent to me by Britishscholars … show that Burghley was notonly inept in ruling England’s financialmatters, but he aided and abetted crimeafter crime, plus he plundered variouswards’ estates,” including Oxford’s.

Matus rejoined, “I don’t think there’sanything with less foundation.” May claimed

that two books (not further identified) onOxford’s wardship claim that Burghley didnot profit personally from his wardships,even though other nobles admittedly did.

7. Parting Shot.7. Parting Shot.7. Parting Shot.7. Parting Shot.7. Parting Shot.

The Stratfordian side inserted a variantof the Great Circular Argument that alsoinvolved an implicit statement about theplays that I believe is counter-factual (i.e.a lie), but that went unremarked during thedebate. In his first remarks, Nelson saidthat, since The Winter’s Tale wasn’t li-censed until 1610, “to imagine that it waswritten by Oxford in 1604…and that it wasjust sitting around unused for 6 or 8 years,is a complete misunderstanding of howplays were written, and what they werewritten for, they could only be performedonce they were licensed, so the time be-tween the completion of the play and thelicensing of the play was very short.” AsHess replied, licensing was only requiredfor public performances, so Nelson’s argu-ment boils down to assuming that Shake-speare was a member of a play company—the point that ought to be the one in needof proof—ruling out the possibility thatOxford was Shakespeare ex hypothesi.

Nelson later restated his point, sayingthat, “The strongest argument in favor ofWilliam Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avonis that he was a man of the theater, the plays,above all are the product of a man in thetheater.” On what basis does he rest thisassertion?

But there is another hidden implicationin Nelson’s argument. Since not all of theplays in the Folio were known to have been

performed prior to 1623, howcan he explain the appearanceof even one single “new” play inthe Folio, much less the 16 pre-viously unpublished plays ap-pearing in 1623? By his reason-ing, all of Shakespeare’s playswere ex hypothesi licensed, thenpromptly performed, since allthe money was in performance,not printed publication, as heclaimed.

Returning to this theme,Nelson stated that the plays notknown to have been printed inquarto before 1623 “wereowned by the…King’s Men,”and that the entire explanationof the Folio’s appearance wasthe desire of Shakespeare’s fel-low actors Heminges and

Condell “to bring out the plays of theirfellow” in print. The only self-consistentposition Nelson can take is to assert that,despite the absence of documentary evi-dence, all of the 36 plays of the First Foliowere, in fact, performed by the King’s Menduring Shakspere’s lifetime. It would beimportant for Nelson to be asked this ques-tion. If he says yes, then it’s time for him toproduce evidence for it. If he says no, thenhe has undercut—or even entirely de-stroyed—one of the strongest argumentsfrom the Stratfordian camp, since the fail-ure to license and perform plays suppos-edly written by Shakespeare for “his” com-pany would demonstrate that Shakespearewrote at least some plays neither for per-formance nor publication—a total contra-diction for the Stratford argument.

ConclusionConclusionConclusionConclusionConclusion

In sum, this all-day event was a land-mark in the authorship debate. There wasa thorough airing of many issues andmany of each side’s best arguments werepresented. In this observer’s estimation, alot of Oxfordian points went unansweredfrom the Stratfordian side and a numberof Stratfordian positions were shown tobe self-contradictory or absurd.

However, Oxfordians have some workto do on a number of assertions made,largely ones that are about to make theirfirst appearance in Nelson’s book, but theyalso now have, with the experience of thisdebate, the raw material to craft even morepointed and specific challenges to theStratfordian camp in future debates andpublications.

Representing the Oxfordian case were Oxfordian researcher Ron Hess,author of The Dark Side of Shakespeare (2000 photo), and Katherine Chiljan,editor of The Letters and Poems of Edward, Earl of Oxford (1998 photo).



What is the end of study, let me know?Why, that to know which else we should

not know.Things hid and barred, you mean, from

common sense?Ay, that is study’s godlike recompense.

(Love’s Labour’s Lost, I.i.55)

Unsolved enigmas stimulate the hu-man mind; unraveling them acceptsthe de Verean challenge seeking “to

know which else we should not know.”The enigma in this case is a six-word

handwritten Latin annotation stumbledacross in the University of Hawaii’s micro-filmed copy of the 1590 edition of WilliamCamden’s Britannia. A photocopy of thedifficult-to-read penned comment was readby a consulting Professor of Latin as “IsGulielmo Shakespear Rescio plani nostro”and translated as “Thus I find out thatWilliam Shakespeare is an impostor.”1

Could the annotator be the first anti-Stratfordian, even an Oxfordian, possiblyas early as the 17th Century? When was themysterious comment written and who wasthe writer? The hunt was on. As ProfessorRudolph Altrocchi has written:

How mistaken those people are whothink the scholar’s life is nothing morethan a monotonous grind! There are ad-ventures for the literary sleuth as for themuch more frequently exalted private de-tective, adventures in books as thrilling asadventures in life. Indeed, what are booksif not records of adventures in life? Andsome old volumes have stories, quite apartfrom those told in the printed page, storiesfull of mystery, romance, even crime. Theseadventures reveal themselves only to thebooky explorer, the research scholar.2

The factsThe factsThe factsThe factsThe facts

The University of Michigan micro-filmed the six Latin editions (1586, 1587,1590, 1594, 1600, and 1607) and two En-glish editions (1610 and 1637) of WilliamCamden’s Britannia, using books of its

Sleuthing an enigmatic Latin annotation

By Paul H. Altrocchi, M.D.By Paul H. Altrocchi, M.D.By Paul H. Altrocchi, M.D.By Paul H. Altrocchi, M.D.By Paul H. Altrocchi, M.D.

own as well as ones borrowed from otherlibraries, making copies available to alllibraries in the world. For microfilmingthe 1590 Third Latin Edition it used a copyowned by The Huntington Library in San

Marino, California.3 The Huntington hadpurchased the volume from ClarenceSaunders Brigham in January, 1922.4

Brigham was President of the AmericanAntiquarian Society and often volunteeredto fill gaps in the Huntington’s book col-lections on overseas buying trips, a storydetailed in Don Dickinson’s Henry E.Huntington’s Library of Libraries.

Thus Brigham merely acted as a pur-chasing intermediary for the copy now atthe Huntington. The bookseller was neverrevealed and the provenance of the bookbetween 1590 and 1922 is impossible totrace.5 Camden’s brief description of Strat-ford-on-Avon appears on pages 452 and453 of the 1590 edition and reads as fol-lows:6

Plenior hinc Avona defertur primùm perCharlcott nobilis & equestris familiaeLuciorum habitationem, quae à Charlcottisiam olim ad illos haereditario quasitransmigravit: & per Stratford emporiolúnon elegans [sic. This word was misprinted;it should have been “inelegans”], guodduobus fuis alumnis omnem dignitatemdebet loanni de Stratford Archiepiscopo

Cantuariensi qui templu posuit, & HugoniClopton Pretori Londinési, qui A vonaepontem faxeum quatuordecem fornicibussubnixum non fine maximis impensisinduxit.

The key lines with relevance to thispaper are underlined. The English transla-tion of the paragraph (with the same keylines underlined) is:

From here the River Avon flows downmore strongly first through famousCharlcott and the house of the knightlyfamily of Lucies which long ago passed tothem from the Charlcotts as it were byheredity, and through the not(un)distinguished little market town ofStratford, which owes all of its reputationto its two foster sons, John of Stratford, theArchbishop of Canterbury who built thechurch, and Hugh Clopton, the magis-trate of London who began the stone bridgeover the Avon supported by fourteen arches,not without very great expense.

The last printed line on page 452 reads:

quod duobus fuis alumnis omnemdignitatem debet loanni(trans. = ...which owes all of its reputationto its two foster sons...).

There is a penned underline (see figure1) beneath the word “alumnis” which means“alumni” or “foster sons” or, as PhilemonHolland translated it in the English edi-tions of 1610 and 1637, “there bred andbrought up.”

At the bottom of page 452, below thatunderline, is the intriguing handwrittencomment in ink which, when photographeddirectly from the book, is seen to state inLatin: “et Gulielmo Shakeƒpear Roƒcioplanè nostro.”

Three key words—et, Roscio, andplanè—are now seen differently from theoriginal imperfect photocopy of the mi-crofilm and yield an entirely differentmeaning.

“The enigma is a“The enigma is a“The enigma is a“The enigma is a“The enigma is a

six word handwrittensix word handwrittensix word handwrittensix word handwrittensix word handwritten

Latin annotationLatin annotationLatin annotationLatin annotationLatin annotation

stumbled across ... [in a]stumbled across ... [in a]stumbled across ... [in a]stumbled across ... [in a]stumbled across ... [in a]

1590 edition of William1590 edition of William1590 edition of William1590 edition of William1590 edition of William

Camden’s Camden’s Camden’s Camden’s Camden’s Britannia.”Britannia.”Britannia.”Britannia.”Britannia.”



Translation of the annotation’s firstTranslation of the annotation’s firstTranslation of the annotation’s firstTranslation of the annotation’s firstTranslation of the annotation’s firstWord: “Et”Word: “Et”Word: “Et”Word: “Et”Word: “Et”

The first “word” of the annotation is aTirolian note for “et”, the Latin word for“and.” It is fancily penned but its main anddarkest component is similar to the num-ber “7” and means the same as our modernprinted symbol “&.”7 The handwrittenshape of such symbols changed over timeuntil printing presses tended to standard-ize their design.

Various abbreviations and symbols likethe asterisk (*), which connoted poeticverses regarded as authentic, can be tracedas far back as Alexandrian Greece in thefourth century B.C.8 Most of us do not knowshorthand but we all use such shortcutabbreviations and symbols as “part of En-glish,” e.g.:

1. Abbreviations: “i.e.” = “that is”, de-rived from the Latin id est; “e.g.” = “forexample”, derived from the Latin exempligratia.

2. Symbols: # % & @

The invention of a comprehensive sys-tem of shorthand is credited to MarcusTullius Tiro, a former Roman slave whobecame a freedman and the secretary ofCicero (106-43 B.C.). Recognizing Tiro’shigh intellect, Cicero encouraged him todevelop a standard tachygraphic (speedwriting) system which could be used torecord Cicero’s dictation and speeches andalso be taught to professional scribes.9

The system rapidly spread. Many Ro-mans trained special slaves as shorthandwriters. Students learned shorthand to takedown lectures. Even prominent Romanslearned the system, e.g., Cicero himself andSeneca (4 B.C.- 65 A.D.) the philosopher,statesman and writer of nine tragedies whoamplified and codified the system further.10

So successful was Tiro’s concept andsystem that for centuries shorthand wasknown as “notae Tironianae” or “Tironiannotes.” Tiro retired to a farm and, beforedying at the age of 100, played an impor-tant role in preserving the literary worksand extensive personal correspondence ofhis close friend Marcus Tullius Cicero.11

Translation of the second and thirdTranslation of the second and thirdTranslation of the second and thirdTranslation of the second and thirdTranslation of the second and thirdwords: Gulielmo Shakeƒpearwords: Gulielmo Shakeƒpearwords: Gulielmo Shakeƒpearwords: Gulielmo Shakeƒpearwords: Gulielmo Shakeƒpear

Gulielmo = William. Shakeƒspear (=Shakespeare) has a second “s” in the “sec-retary” style of writing (vide infra) andlacks a final “e”.

Translation of the annotation’s fourthTranslation of the annotation’s fourthTranslation of the annotation’s fourthTranslation of the annotation’s fourthTranslation of the annotation’s fourthword: Roƒcioword: Roƒcioword: Roƒcioword: Roƒcioword: Roƒcio

The second letter is definitely differentfrom every “e” in the annotation and, de-spite its solid black ink center, is an “o”, notan “e”. The “ƒ’’ is an “s” in the secretaryhand. The word, therefore, is not Rescio butRoscio. What is the meaning of Roscio, aword not in any Latin dictionary?

“Roscio” is rarely encountered nowa-days, and the author is indebted to aninsightful comment by Roger Stritmatterfrom the audience when this material wasfirst presented at the Seventh Annual Ed-ward de Vere Studies Conference in Port-land, Oregon, this past April12 (see articleon page 1).

Quintus Roscius Gallus (c.126 - 62 B.C.)was born a slave at Solonium, south ofRome. Handsome with an elegant carriage,he moved to Rome to study acting, fre-quenting the Roman forum to study theeloquence and delivery of famous oratorsincluding Quintus Hortensius and Cicero.He became a master of the acting art, thefinest comic actor of his time, so remark-ably outstanding that Cicero took lessonsfrom him and the Emperor Sulla presentedhim with a gold ring, symbol of equestrianrank, a unique distinction for an actor. Heeven wrote a treatise comparing actingand oratory. He amassed a fortune from hisacting.13

In a time of grandeur for Rome andsome of its famous leaders, Roscius wasdeemed so supremely peerless that hisname came to symbolize greatness in the-atrical artistry and, in later centuries, su-premacy in any field of artistic endeavor,i.e., a consummate artist.14

In 18th century England the termRoscius or Roscian was still applied to

uniquely great actors, e.g.:

1. James Boswell (1740 - 1795), notedbiographer of Samuel Johnson, wrote, “Iwas sitting with the great Roscius of theage, David Garrick.”

2. In Theatre in the Age of Garrick,C. Price said: “To the eighteenth century,Garrick was the outstanding actor of mod-ern times, and to call him ‘Roscius’ as wasso often done was merely to indicate that inone respect at least, England could rivalancient Rome.”15

In his later years, Garrick had the dubi-ous distinctions of financing the fabrica-tion of a new statue of “Shakespeare” in1768 for the north side niche in Stratford’sTrinity Parish Church (now claimed as “theoriginal” by Stratfordians), and in 1769initiating the Shakespearean Festival inStratford-on-Avon which continues to thepresent day.

Now back to our Latin annotation. Theannotator uses the dative case of “Roscius,”i.e., “Roscio,” in accord with Camden’s useof the dative case: “. . Stratford, which owesall of its reputation to its two foster sons—John of Stratford, the Archbishop of Can-terbury who built the church, and HughClopton . . .”

The unknown annotator is adding “andto our Roscius . . .” which, in Latin, requiresthe dative case.

Was Edward de Vere aware of the quint-essential actor, Roscius? Yes, indeed! Ournew friend Roscius is encountered twice inde Vere’s plays:

(1 ) 3 Henry VI ( V.vi.10). Henry VI is aboutto be murdered by Gloucester and askshim:

Figure 1. The intriguing handwritten annotation—apparently never before noted by anyShakespeare researcher—that the author found in the UMI microfilm copy of Camden’sBritannia (1590 edition) while researching entries under “Stratford” in all the availableeditions of Britannia (ranging from 1586 to 1637).


Courtesy of the Henry E. Huntington LibraryCourtesy of the Henry E. Huntington LibraryCourtesy of the Henry E. Huntington LibraryCourtesy of the Henry E. Huntington LibraryCourtesy of the Henry E. Huntington Library



So flies the reckless shepherd from thewolf;

So first the harmless sheep doth yieldhis fleece,

And next his throat unto the butcher’sknife.

What scene of death hath Roscius nowto act?

(2) Hamlet (II.ii.392). As a group of theat-rical players arrives at Elinsore Castle,Hamlet, feigning madness, mocksPolonius:

Hamlet (aside): I will prophesy he comesto tell me of the players. Mark it. Yousay right, sir, for o’ Monday morning, ’twas so indeed.

Polonius: My lord, I have news to tellyou.

Hamlet: My lord, I have news to tell you.When Roscius was an actor in Rome

Polonius: The actors are come hither,my lord.

Hamlet: Buzz, buzz.

Translation of the annotation’s fifthTranslation of the annotation’s fifthTranslation of the annotation’s fifthTranslation of the annotation’s fifthTranslation of the annotation’s fifthword: planèword: planèword: planèword: planèword: planè

Planè is an adverb meaning “certainly,”as used by the great Roman writer of com-edies, Plautus, who died in 184 B.C. and waspaid homage to by Edward de Vere, who usedplots from Amphitrua, Aulularia, andManaechmi in his own plays. Planè wasused by Cicero to mean “distinctly,” “clearly”or “intelligibly”—as in “planissimeexplicare,” to explain distinctly or clearly.16

The fifth letter in “planè” is a secretary“e” (vide infra), not an “i.” The word is not“plani,” the Latin subjective genitive caseof “planus” describing the source of anactivity, “Shakespeare’s impostoring” as itwas first translated erroneously.17

The Latin language used a line over avowel such as “i” or “e” to express longnessin pronunciation. By the middle ages it haddisappeared, being replaced by accentmarks to indicate either long vowels orstressed syllables,18 as used by our un-known annotator.

Translation of the sixth word: nostroTranslation of the sixth word: nostroTranslation of the sixth word: nostroTranslation of the sixth word: nostroTranslation of the sixth word: nostroNostro means “our” in Latin.We can now see that the complete,

correct translation of the annotation is:

And certainly to our Roscius, WilliamShakespear.

So what Camden is saying in the 1590entry under the town of Stratford-on-Avonis that the otherwise rather undistinguishedmarket town owes its reputation to twoeminent local sons, John, who becameArchbishop of Canterbury, and HughClopton, who built Stratford’s lovely bridge.The annotator is adding his opinion thatStratford also certainly owes its reputationto “our” Roscius, William Shakespeare.

Relevant history ofRelevant history ofRelevant history ofRelevant history ofRelevant history ofEnglish handwritingEnglish handwritingEnglish handwritingEnglish handwritingEnglish handwriting

The secretarial hand was an indigenousEnglish creation—developing from thesmall handwriting characteristic of thereign of Henry VII (1485-1509). Fancy anddifficult to write but popular because of itsgraceful appearance, the secretary handwas well established in England by 1525and became the working hand both ofscribes and businessmen in the 1500s,lingering into the first half of the 1600s.19

As Martin Billingsley said in his 1618 analy-sis of handwriting, The Pens Excellence:20

The secretary . . . is so termed (as Iconceive) because it is the Secretaries com-mon hand; and partly because it is the onlyusual hand of England, for dispatching ofall manner of businesses.

The italic hand appeared in Italy in1423 and was officially adopted by theVatican’s papal chancery in 1431. It ap-peared in England in the early 1500s andrapidly spread. Why? Because of its greaterease and clarity and because emigratingItalian writing teachers dominated Euro-pean and English handwriting and print-ing styles in the 16th century.21

The italic hand soon became favoredby scholars at Cambridge, including RogerAscham, who tutored the future QueenElizabeth I in calligraphy as well as Greekand Latin from 1548 to 1550, when Eliza-beth was 15 to 17 years old. Having learnedthe secretarial hand first, she was adept atboth scripts, as were Francis Bacon and anumber of Elizabethan nobles.22 Edwardde Vere and his nemesis, William Cecil,used the italic hand.

There was a continuing battle betweenthe two hands in England in the late 1500sand 1600s, written documents and lettersoften showing an intermixture but with theitalic hand increasingly predominating.23

Ardent Stratfordian Giles Dawson ofthe Folger Shakespeare Library summa-rized the demise of the secretary hand: “By1650 it was well on its way towards extinc-tion, and by 1700 it had vanished notwithout a trace, but vanished as a distincthand.”24

Analysis of the annotation’sAnalysis of the annotation’sAnalysis of the annotation’sAnalysis of the annotation’sAnalysis of the annotation’s handwriting: can it be dated? handwriting: can it be dated? handwriting: can it be dated? handwriting: can it be dated? handwriting: can it be dated?

Our annotation is a mixture of secre-tarial and italic hands. The two secretarialletters are the “e” and the “ƒ = s”.

The clearly secretarial “e” appears fourtimes in Gulielmo, Shakespear (twice),and planè. Each of these “e’s” has a horizon-tal slash near the top which is formed by abroad separate stroke of the pen, quitedistinctive from an italic “e,” which is thesame as our printed “e” today. The italic “e”is well exemplified in personal letters writ-ten by Edward de Vere.25 The secretary “e”persisted longer than all other secretarialletters as the italic script took over.26

The “ƒ” (see figure 1) as the sixth letterin “Shakespear” and the third letter in“Roscio” is a definite secretarial “s” inform, quite different from the italic “s,”which looks exactly like our modernprinted “s.” The “ƒ” persisted so long inmixed scripts that it is given less diagnos-tic value in dating than the secretarial“e.”27

The “t” in nostro is flourished but notclearly secretarial.28

In the 1500s the “i” is usually accentedrather than dotted, so the dotted “i” inGulielmo and in Roscio favors a date inthe 1600s or later.

Handwriting analysts try to decide theearliest and latest dates for a piece ofwriting. Given the important caveats thathandwriting analysis is an inexact scienceand that a sample of six words is extremelysmall, the author’s experts state that theoverall predominance of the italic hand(30 out of 35 letters = 86%), mixed withsecretarial “e’s” and “ƒ’s,” suggest that ourannotation was most likely written be-tween 1620 and 1650.29

Summary and ConclusionsSummary and ConclusionsSummary and ConclusionsSummary and ConclusionsSummary and Conclusions

1. The ink annotation found on page452 of the Huntington Library’s copy ofWilliam Camden’s 1590 Third Edition ofBritannia correctly reads: “et Gulielmo

Latin annotation (cont’d from page 17)



Shakespear Roscio planè nostro.”2. In English this reads: “and certainly

to our Roscius, William Shakespeare.”3. Handwriting analysis suggests the

annotation was written between 1620 and1650.

4. By his annotation, the book’s owneris declaring himself a Stratfordian since heis attributing Stratford-on-Avon’s reputa-tion to Shakespeare as well as to its twofoster sons, John, Archbishop of Canter-bury and Hugh Clopton, the only twoStratford “alumni” thought worthy of noteby Camden.

5. Owners of any book except the Biblein those days were certainly members ofthe educated class, especially the owner ofa book in Latin who wrote a Latin annota-tion. This does not mean he was a memberof the nobility, since most members ofEdward de Vere’s University Wits werefluent in Latin and none were nobles, andsince other bright commoners like BenJonson knew Latin. The identity of theannotator will never be known.

6. Since there is no evidence thatShaksper of Stratford was a famous actorand little or no valid evidence that he wasan actor at all, this reference to “Roscius”raises an interesting question. Just whatdid the annotator know about Shaksper ofStratford? He believes Shaksper is famousenough to be mentioned as an importantfoster son of Stratford, but in what capacity?

If the annotator knew the works ofShakespeare, why not call him “Our honey-tongued Ovid” or “Our mellifluousVirgilian wordsmith?” In the vast majorityof cases, “Roscius” has been used to refer togreat actors, including Shakespeare’s twousages in 3 Henry VI and Hamlet. CallingShaksper “Roscius” would seem to indi-cate that, despite the lack of evidence,there were some who thought he was anactor and that acting was how he “made it”in London.

7. The annotation, likely written sosoon after Shaksper of Stratford’s death in1616, does confirm the remarkable earlysuccess of what Oxfordians view as Will-iam Cecil’s clever but monstrous conniv-ance: forcing the genius Edward de Vereinto pseudonymity and promoting the il-literate grain merchant and real estatespeculator, William Shaksper of Stratford,into hoaxian prominence as the great poetand playwright, William Shakespeare.

Final commentsFinal commentsFinal commentsFinal commentsFinal comments

In addition to the obvious reminderthat one must always make certain thatresearch material is copied with uncom-promised technical accuracy, sleuthing acryptic six-word Latin annotation in a 1590book led to edification in the followingscholarly arenas:

1. Paleography, the study of ancientwriting.

2. The wonderful intricacies of LinguaLatina, the Latin language.

3. The historical origins and developmentof shorthand.

4. The life of Tiro and his historicallyimportant association with Cicero.

5. The life of Quintus Roscius and use ofthe terms “Roscius” or “Roscian” forsupremely gifted artists in any field,especially actors.

6. Study of Elizabethan handwriting, theevolution of the secretary hand and itsdemise, and the supremacy of the italichand up to the present.

7. The techniques of handwriting analysisin chronological dating.

All of the these derivatives represent arather bountiful harvest from six wordshastily scribbled more than 300 years ago.Edward de Vere’s viewpoint on literarystudy and research is once again confirmed:

Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun. Love’s Labour’s Lost (I.i.84)

The author is indebted to Stephen Ta-bor, Curator of Early Printed Books, Hun-tington Library, for sage and helpful ad-vice.

ReferencesReferencesReferencesReferencesReferences

1. The Latin professor will remain anonymousbecause he was so wrong!

2. Rudolph Altrocchi. Sleuthing in the Stacks.Harvard Univ. Press, page 3, Cambridge,Mass., 1944.

3. Personal telephone communication, Univ. ofMichigan Library research staff, 2002.

4. Personal communication from StephenTabor, Curator of Early Printed Books,Huntington Library, San Marino,California, 2002.

5. Ibid.6. Paul Altrocchi. “What did William Camden

Say? Why and When Did He Say It?”(Presentation at 7th Annual Edward deVere Studies Conference, Portland, Oregon,April 13, 2003).

7. Tabor, op. cit.8. Sir Edward Maunde Thompson. An

Introduction to Greek and LatinPalaeography. Clarendon Press, Oxford,1912.

9. Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Literatureand Antiquities. Editor, Harry ThurstonPeck, American Book Co., Harper & Bros.,NY, 1896.

10. Ibid.11. Thompson, op. cit.12. Comment made by Roger Stritmatter after

presentation of “What Did WilliamCamden Say? Why and When Did He SayIt?”, 7th Annual Edward de Vere StudiesConference, Portland, Oregon, April 13,2003.

13. Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition,volume XXIII. Cambridge Univ. Press,England, 1911, p. 275.

14. The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th Edition,NY, 2001. (also: Tabor, op. cit.).

15. Cited by Oxford English Dictionary, vol.XIV. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989. p.103.

16. Cassell’s New Latin Dictionary. Editor,D.D. Simpson. Funk & Wagnalls Co., NY,1960.

17. Anonymous Latin professor, op. cit.18. Bernard Bischoff. Latin Palaeography.

Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Trans. byDaibhi Croinin & David Ganz. CambridgeUniv. Press, 1990.

19. N. Denholm Young. Handwriting inEngland and Wales. Univ. of Wales Press,Cardiff, 1954. (Also: Bischoff, op. cit.)

20. Cited in: Giles E. Dawson and LaetitiaKennedy Skipton. Elizabethan Handwrit-ing, 1500-1650. A Manual. W.W. Norton& Co, Inc., NY, 1966.

21. Young, op. cit.22. Ibid.23. Ibid.24. Dawson and Skipton, op. cit.25. William Plumer Fowler. Shakespeare

Revealed in Oxford’s Letters, preface, PeterE. Randall, Portsmouth, New Hampshire,1986.

26. Tabor, op. cit.27. Ibid.28. Ibid.29. Mary Robertson, handwriting expert and

Chief Curator of Manuscripts, TheHuntington Library, San Marino, Calif.,2003, communicated to the author viaStephen Tabor (Tabor, op. cit.).



Oxford’s new coat of arms in 1586If heraldry is a statement about ancestry, what was de Vere saying?

By Barbara Burris

In 1950 Giles Dawson of the FolgerShakespeare Library saw his chance toundermine Charles Wisner Barrell’s

otherwise solid case for Edward de Vere,17th Earl of Oxford, as the Ashbourne por-trait sitter. Dawson doubted Barrell’s con-tentions that the entire coat of arms on thepainting was the Trentham arms—the fam-ily arms of de Vere’s second wife, ElizabethTrentham. Dawson showed the Folger x-rays to a Herald of Arms in the College ofArms in London. The Herald wrote toDawson that a woman would not have acrest, though the crest could possibly bethat of Elizabeth Trentham’s father. TheHerald found the figures on the x-ray of theshield too indistinct to identify as anyparticular coat of arms.

But he stated that the arms could not bethose of Trentham’s husband, the Earl ofOxford, because, “the Arms of de Vere areof a very distinct type quite different fromthis Coat.”1 The coat of arms (or moreprecisely the achievement) of the ancientOxford line consists of a blue boar in thecrest and a silver mullet (star) in the firstof four quarters of the shield. The crest inthe uncovered arms on the painting is ofa bird facing left and the shield is of threebirds heads with ears (griffins). Barrell hadidentified the crest as the Trentham griffinand lion crest and the shield as the threegriffin heads armed and erased of theTrenthams.

Although the Herald did not provideDawson any clear evidence against Barrell’sclaims, the issue of the coat of arms on thepainting nevertheless presented a prob-lem for Barrell’s case. Curiously, given allthe evidence that the painting was one ofOxford, there seemed to be no evidence ofthe de Vere boar crest in the coat of arms.One would expect the husband’s crest to bedisplayed above the wife’s family shield,2

especially since the evidence of the uncov-ered arms, despite alterations, shows Barrellwas correct about the Trentham griffins inthe shield.3

Apparently, neither Barrell, Dawson,nor the Herald at Arms was aware thatEdward de Vere had changed the Oxfordheraldry sometime between 1574 and 1586.Although de Vere printed these changes,it is unlikely he registered them with theheraldry authority of the time.

The startling fact is that de Vere elimi-nated the ancient Oxford boar crest andreplaced it with an eagle crest.4 It is thelatter crest that we will fit into the coat ofarms on the Ashbourne painting, showingthat the combined crest and shield on thepainting is Edward de Vere’s new eaglecrest above the Trentham family shield.

Book depictions of theBook depictions of theBook depictions of theBook depictions of theBook depictions of thede Vere eagle crestde Vere eagle crestde Vere eagle crestde Vere eagle crestde Vere eagle crest

The fact that Edward de Vere replaced theOxford boar with an eagle is beyond dispute.While still in his youth in 1574, de Verepublished The Composition or making ofthe most precious Oil called OleumMagiftrate by Dr. George Baker. On the pageopposite Baker’s dedication to de Vere ap-pears the Oxford achievement of arms com-plete with the Oxford shield, earl’s coronet,helmet and blue boar atop the cap of main-tenance (figure 1). These were the ancientOxford family arms that had remained un-changed for 16 generations.

But 12 years later, in 1586, when TheEnglish Secretary (attributed to Angel Day,but possibly by de Vere) was published theOxford arms opposite the dedication to deVere appear drastically changed (figure 2).The ancient and venerable blue boar of theOxford family crest has been removed en-tirely and in its place is a double crownedeagle crest. The shield supporters have beenredrawn and reversed and 13 quarteringsadded to the shield. These changes are not ananomaly, or a mistake in printing. They arerepeated in the 1592 and 1595 re-printingsof Secretary.5 The arms opposite JohnFarmer’s dedication to de Vere in the TheFirst Set of English Madrigals, published in

1599, also show the same eagle crest.The altered Oxford arms are proof that

from 1586 (the year he began receiving his£1,000 pension from the Queen) through1599 de Vere publicly proclaimed he wasusing a different heraldry from the ancientOxford clan. Why? Heraldic symbolismrepresented one’s ancestry, and, as oneHerald of Arms put it, “the glory of descentfrom a long line of armigerous ancestors,the glory and the pride of race inseparablyinterwoven with the inheritance of a namewhich has been famous in history. Thedisplay of a particular coat of arms hasbeen the method, which society has coun-tenanced, of advertising to the world thatone is a descendant of some ancestor whoperformed some glorious deed,” and is“the very sign of a particular descent or ofa particular rank. By the use of a certaincoat of arms, you assert your descent fromthe person to whom those arms weregranted.”6 As the Herald stated, one of thetwo essential qualities of armory was thatit was a definite sign of hereditary nobilityand rank. One of its main purposes was todemonstrate pedigree and connection to afamily line.

Coats of arms were still extremely im-portant in the 1500s for these purposes,especially in such a notable aristocraticfamily as the Earls of Oxford. Why thenwould Edward de Vere distance himselffrom the ancient Oxford heraldic armsand, by implication, from the Oxford fam-ily line? He did not tinker with the arms foraesthetic purposes but boldly replaced amajor component of the Oxford achieve-ment—the entire heraldic crest of thefamous blue boar. (Although he maintainedthe Oxford mullet arms on the shield headded 13 more arms, some of which appar-ently do not relate to the Oxford line.)

These changes were not done secretly.Thus it appears they were done to make astatement. What was Edward de Vere say-ing with this heraldry change? The answerappears to go far beyond the Ashbourne


Internet Ed. (©2003, The Shakespeare Fellowship - not for sale or distribution without written consent)(Continued on page 22)

painting issues and may lead to part ofthe explanation of the great “Shake-speare” mystery.

Thomas Chaucer’sThomas Chaucer’sThomas Chaucer’sThomas Chaucer’sThomas Chaucer’sChange in HeraldryChange in HeraldryChange in HeraldryChange in HeraldryChange in Heraldry

At this point it would be helpful tolook at another example of a change inheraldry—one involving ThomasChaucer, purported son of the poetGeoffrey Chaucer.

In The Life and Times of Chaucer,John Gardner discusses the issue ofThomas Chaucer’s legitimacy. The storygoes that Thomas was actually the sonof John of Gaunt, Chaucer’s patron, andGaunt’s mistress, Philipa. Gaunt andChaucer arranged that Chaucer wouldmarry the pregnant Philipa, who was ofa higher class than Chaucer. Elizabethwas the first child born to Philipa andThomas the second child, rumored alsoto be by Gaunt, not Chaucer. “The tradi-tion begins with Speght who reluctantlyreports, damaging his own case, ‘yetsome hold opinion (but I know not uponwhat grounds) that Thomas Chaucer wasnot the sonne of Geoffrey Chaucer, butrather some kinsman of his whome heebrought up.’”7

Gardner relates much of the evidenceof special treatment of Philipa and Thomasby Gaunt, including a pension for Thomasthat was far larger than Geoffrey’s, laterdoubled, other large monetary grants toThomas from Gaunt and Gaunt’s familyafter his death, and Thomas’s special rela-tions with the Gaunt family. Also, Thomas’sfailure to claim Hainault property in hismother’s line (she was a Roet heiress) is anindication of his illegitimacy. Philipa’ssister Katherine’s son by Gaunt (Katherinewas also a mistress of Gaunt who eventu-ally married him) was barred from theHainault property on claims of illegiti-macy until Henry IV issued a special writdeclaring his legitimacy (one of the legiti-mized offspring of Gaunt from which de-rived future lines of kings). Gardner notesthat “according to Prof. Williams the like-lihood, or anyway suspicion, is that notonly Chaucer’s daughter Elizabeth but hisson Thomas was biologically a child ofGaunt.”8 Russell Kraus wrote a serious

study of the claim in The Paternity ofThomas Chaucer in hopes of disprovingit “but ended up convinced that there wasno other way of accounting for the facts.”9

But what concerns us here is the evi-dence of changes to Thomas Chaucer’scoat of arms. Gardner states that on histomb Thomas took his mother’s Roet arms,but not Geoffrey Chaucer’s, and thoughshe was of higher degree, Chaucer’s fameas a poet “makes this omission curious.”10

But “Thomas’s apparent alteration of hisfather’s arms is even stranger. A seal usedby Thomas Chaucer in 1409 is marked S(G)HOFRAI CHAUCER”—it is not Thomas’sseal but Geoffrey’s—“and on this seal wefind a bend entire. All other surviving coatsof Thomas Chaucer exhibit a bendcountercolored.” The explanation this wasa personal whim is unconvincing “sincethe alteration could be construed as a signof bastardy.”11

The double crownThe double crownThe double crownThe double crownThe double crown

What statement was Edward de Veremaking with these changes to the Oxfordarms? To answer that question we mustexamine the changes that he made, again

focusing on the changes to the crest.We notice that the new eagle crest is

atop a double crown. The earl’s coronet (atype of crown or coronet of rank) still sitsabove the shield beneath the helmet. Butinstead of the chapeau or cap of mainte-nance upon which the old Oxford boarstood there is another crown from whichthe eagle emerges. This is an uncommondouble crown crest.

The second crown in the new crest isnot another earl’s crown or coronet—eachrank in the peerage has a distinctive coro-net or crown structure. This crown is un-like any of the peerage coronets or crowns.It is a unique ornamental crown. The de-sign resembles Fleurs-de-lis with the two“side petals” turned up rather than down.The configuration of de Vere’s unique ab-stracted ornamental crown resembles theflames of a fire (see figures 3 and 4, nextpage). It is a crown of stylized “flames”beneath the eagle with upraised wingsabout to fly away (in heraldry an eaglerising wings displayed and inverted). Thiscombination strongly suggests a phoenix.In heraldry a phoenix is portrayed as aneagle issuing from flames. Thus the pecu-

Fig. 1Fig. 1Fig. 1Fig. 1Fig. 1


In figure 1 is the traditional Oxford coat of arms, aspublished in 1574 in Dr. Baker’s The Composition ormaking [etc.]. Figure 2 shows the new coat of armsthat first appeared in 1586 as part of the dedicationto Oxford in Angel Day’s The English Secretary.



Coat of arms (cont’d from p. 21)liar configuration of this second crownand a major part of its function is ex-plained.12

The Phoenix ConnectionThe Phoenix ConnectionThe Phoenix ConnectionThe Phoenix ConnectionThe Phoenix Connection

But what does the phoenix have to dowith Edward de Vere? We know that one ofthe appellations of the Queen was “thePhoenix.” Shake-speare’s last poem wascalled The Phoenix and the Turtle (dove)symbolizing (to many Oxfordians) theQueen as the Phoenix and the author as theTurtle (dove). A portrait of the Queen (c.1575-76) is called the Phoenix portraitbecause she is wearing a large jeweledphoenix pin. The Phoenix “was one of herfavorite emblems and appears in differentforms on her portraits.” 13 We know thatEdward de Vere gave the Queen elaboratejeweled pins as New Year’s gifts, and one isnoted from him in 1575 (new calendar) ofa ship studded with diamonds.14

Karen Hearn, in her book on paintingsof the era, notes, “The phoenix did notcome into use as a symbol of Elizabethuntil the 1570s. A surviving ‘PhoenixJewel’…dates from c. 1570-80. Within anenamelled wreath of flowers is set a goldprofile bust of Elizabeth I, attired similarlyto the present portrait, with a phoenixin flames on the reverse.”15 This phoenixjewel is dated c. 1574 by Roy Strong16 (seefigure 4).

Hearn also notes that in 1586 (newcalendar) a phoenix jewel was recorded

as a New Year’s gift to the Queen.17 This is,of course, the same year that Oxford’s newcoat of arms with its eagle/phoenix crestmakes its first appearance in The EnglishSecretary.

It is easy to see the Queen making useof Diana, Artemis, the moon, etc., as part ofher persona—virgin goddesses promotedas her public image. But why is she associ-ated with the phoenix? And where did thisassociation come from in the mid-1570s?Mainstream texts attempt to explain it asrelating to her personal history of havingrisen from the ashes of her 1550s imprison-ment and near extinction under the bloodyreign of her Catholic sister Mary. But perhapspart of the answer also lies in the Seymourarms, the crest of which is a phoenix.

The Seymour crest is described in theGeneral Armory as, “Out of a ducal coronetor (gold), a phoenix-gold issuing fromflames.” This would appear to be the pri-mary connection to the de Vere eagle/phoenix crest. The eagle/phoenix in Ed-ward de Vere’s crest is also gold as we knowfrom other representations.

Is the Seymour phoenix crest merely astrange coincidence? Or is it the connectionto the stylized crown of flames with the risingeagle alluding to the phoenix on the alteredcrest of Edward de Vere? Is this Seymourphoenix also the connection to the Queen asthe Phoenix that began in the 1570s?

We know there was a connection be-tween Thomas Seymour and Princess Eliza-beth. Much has been written aboutSeymour’s advances toward the young

Elizabeth in the late 1540s, and aboutrumors of Elizabeth’s pregnancy by himand the “…lurid rumours of her havinggiven birth to Seymour’s bastard.”18

Enough credence was given to theserumors that her servants were arrested andinterrogated and she herself was interro-gated. Further evidence was Elizabeth’sobvious love for Seymour who had beenmaking plans to marry her—plans thatleaked to the public not long before he wasarrested for treason. Shortly after she be-came Queen, Seymour’s friends presentedher with a portrait of Thomas Seymourwith a poem on it.

De Vere’s heraldic statement

Could Edward de Vere have been makinga heraldic statement about his connection toThomas Seymour and the Phoenix Queen—as the illegitimate offspring of that relation-ship? Everything in the changed heraldryseems to indicate that.19 Edward de Verereplaced the Oxford boar crest with a stylizedeagle/phoenix crest that appears to be a dualreference to Seymour’s phoenix crest andElizabeth as the phoenix. That these changesare not coincidental is confirmed by changesEdward de Vere made to the Oxford support-ers in other depictions of his changed armsthat connect to the Seymour’s unicorn sup-porter.20, 21

In his chapter entitled “Marks of Bas-tardy” from A Complete Guide to HeraldryFox-Davies states that despite later timeswhen arms were improperly assumed, in


Fig. 4Fig. 4Fig. 4Fig. 4Fig. 4 By permission, British MuseumBy permission, British MuseumBy permission, British MuseumBy permission, British MuseumBy permission, British Museum

Figure 3 is an enlargement that shows more clearly the unique,atypical design of the “crown” in the 1586 crest. The designappears to be an attempt to represent “stylized licks of flame”beneath the crest’s eagle (similar to the flames depicted inElizabeth’s “Phoenix Jewel,” figure 4), thus inviting close observ-ers to see the eagle as a phoenix.



the past “The use of arms was formerlyevidence of pedigree.”22 It was evidencethat could be taken to court as late as theearly 1800s. That de Vere was making astatement about his own pedigree with hismajor changes to the Oxford family her-aldry is hardly questionable. These changeswere a proclamation. Fox-Davies notesthat most changes to heraldry are knownfrom changes made by royal bastards. Andhe states that “one of the most curiousbastardized coats is that of Henry Fitz-Roy,Duke of Richmond and Somerset, illegiti-mate son of Henry VIII.”23

One might contend that even if de Vere’snew crest is that of a phoenix, it cannot beconclusively linked to the Seymour phoe-nix crest because the phoenix is not anuncommon crest in heraldry.

But there is corroboration of theSeymour connection in both the 13 addedarms and in other later representations ofthe new Oxford arms where even moreextensive changes have been made. It can-not again be coincidence that one of theSeymour supporters is a unicorn and intwo other later representations of de Vere’schanged arms the Oxford boar supporterhas been replaced by one with a unicornbody with added unique allusive featuresrelating to Oxford and to Shake-speare’sworks. These peculiar features are not foundin any other heraldic representation of aunicorn. In one of the renditions no boarremains from the original Oxford coat ofarms in either crest or supporters. Thischange to a unicorn supporter bolsters theinterpretation of the phoenix crest. Howlikely is it that Edward de Vere’s changedheraldry would incorporate both a verydirect allusion to the Seymour phoenixcrest and the Seymour unicorn sup-porter?

Furthermore the Oxford shield depictedin the 1574 Dr. Baker book shows eightquarterings of the Oxford arms. But none ofthe 13 additional quarterings that de Vereadded to these eight in the changed coat ofarms—as depicted in The English Secre-tary—appear in a previous major version,the 13th Earl of Oxford’s great shield of theOxford line.

Yet, investigation of some of these addedarms again shows connections to theSeymour arms and to royal arms. In some of

these added arms there is punning, allusionand changes that cannot be connected torecognized arms.24 These changes will beexplored in future articles. They are extremelyimportant to the Shake-speare mystery.

In a future article we will also returnto the Ashbourne painting, where we willlink this changed de Vere eagle/phoenixcrest to the crest on the Shake-speare por-trait.

ReferencesReferencesReferencesReferencesReferences

1. Letter to Giles E. Dawson from AnthonyR. Wagner, Richmond Herald, 18th April1950, Coat of Arms Identification File,The Ashbourne Portrait File. FolgerShakespeare Library. Washington, DC

2. One would expect the husband’s crest to beused even if these arms were portrayedincorrectly, as is not uncommon inpaintings. The shield in a combined ormarshaled arms would have been impaledwith the husband’s or baron’s arms on thedexter and the wife’s father’s arms on thesinister side. In this combination on thepainting the Trentham family shield issurmounted by Edward de Vere’s eaglecrest. It is the author’s contention that thearms were added to the painting afterEdward de Vere’s death by his widow.Inaccuracies in heraldry on paintings is acommon occurrence due to patron or artistignorance.

3. In previous articles we have providedevidence of alterations to the coat of armswhile in the Folger’s possession, bothbefore and after their X-rays were made in1948.

4. Ruth Loyd Miller, Shakespeare Identified inEdward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, Vol.II. (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press,1975), 51. Note: Miller displays the eaglecrest achievement from the 1599 Farmerbook, but there is an earlier use of thischanged achievement in The EnglishSecretary in 1586. She mis-identified theeagle as a falcon in the crest.

5. Presumably these changes are on the 1599reprint also, but the copy on microfilm atthe University of Michigan library did notshow this page.

6. A.C. Fox-Davies, A Complete Guide toHeraldry, revised and annotated by J.P.Brooke-Little, Richmond Herald of Arms,(Melbourne, Australia: Thomas NelsonLtd., 1969), pp. 17-18.

7. John Gardner, The Life and Times ofChaucer (New York: Barnes & NobleBooks, 1977), 158.

8. Ibid, 158.9. Ibid, 158.

10. Ibid, 159.11. Ibid, 159.12. Fox-Davies, op. cit., 180. Phoenix are

usually depicted as demi-eagles but thereare full eagles with legs used in phoenixcrests.

13. Jane Ashelford, A Visual History of theCostume of the Sixteenth Century (N.Y.Drama Book Pub., 1983), #85, p. 87.

14. Miller, op. cit., Vol II, 525.15. Karen Hearn, editor, Dynasties, Painting in

Tudor and Jacobean England 1530 to 1630(London: Tate Gallery, 1995), # 34Elizabeth I, the Phoenix portrait.

16. Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth,(London: Random House Pimlico edition,1999), 73.

17. Hearn, op. cit. .18. David Starkey, Elizabeth (New York:

Harper Collins, 2001), 77. Starkey, likemany biographers and historians, stillclings to and promotes the myth of thevirgin Queen—a double standard thatwould be laughable if applied to a man.

19. There is other independent corroborationof Edward de Vere’s links to Elizabeth andthe Tudors aside from the heraldry. Twoexamples are the “crown signature” and thepersonal name Edward. Oxford signed hisname with the “crown signature” -a“crown” above and a line below with 7slashes (denoting Edward VII)—fromNovember 1569 until the Queen’s burialand the end of the Tudor line on thethrone. Afterward he abruptly stoppedusing this form of signature though heremained 17th Earl of Oxford until hisdeath. Another curious fact is that beforeEdward, 17th Earl of Oxford, there were noEdwards (the name of Elizabeth’s belovedhalf brother, Edward VI) in the Oxford lineand no Henry’s (both Tudor names), onlyRoberts, Johns and Aubreys. Also, whenthe 16th Earl died, his daughter contestedEdward de Vere’s legitimacy and right toinherit. The Queen quashed the Courtproceedings.

20. There is not space here to explore otherheraldry changes to the shield andsupporters in other sources that confirmthe Seymour and Queen connections to deVere’s changed coat, as well as links inthese changes to Shake-speare throughOvid and the Actaeon myth.

21. It appears that at least one of the thirteenadded arms relates to the royal arms and isnot connected to the Oxford line.

22. Fox-Davies, op. cit., 390.23. Ibid., 401.24. Punning on names and corresponding arms

was common in ancient heraldry. Allusionwas also made in arms. The Duke ofRichmond, bastard son of Henry VIII, madeallusion to his mother’s arms in his Coat.



Book Reviews

Joe Roper, the grad student and narratorof Sarah Smith’s Chasing Shakespeares, andPosy Gould, a glamorous new friend, arelooking at a letter signed by William of Strat-ford that seems to say he was not the drama-tist. Joe thinks it must be a forgery althoughit looks authentic. He says, “I don’t believe inOxford.” Posy replies:

“You are such a —” She looked up at me,long, appraisingly, but almost vulnerably,too. “Are you just trying to lose this letter?You’re supposed to be smart, I can’t believeyou’re being this stupid. We just found Shake-speare. I knew Shakespeare knew Cecil,knew Shakespeare went to Italy, a lot ofpeople think Shakespeare didn’t write theplays, and now we have proof, and I want toknow all about this letter. Why did Shake-speare write it to Fulke Greville, and didGreville know Elizabeth Vere, and–I can’tbelieve you don’t want to know about this.”

“Read the anti-Oxford site and just calmdown. Oxford can’t be Shakespeare.”

“Why not?”“Oxford died in 1604.” I was paging

down the anti-Oxford site. “Shakespeare keptwriting plays until 1613.”

“You’d have to redate the plays,” Posymused.

Take heart, Oxfordians. Thismay be the novel on the Shake-speare authorship question

that captures the imagination of thegeneral reading public and wins aplace on the best-seller lists.

Sarah Smith is the author of threehighly acclaimed historical novelsthat reached bestseller status. Twoof them were named “Notable Booksof the Year” by The New York Times.They have also been published inEngland and in 12 languages. Herpublisher calls her a “literary star onthe rise” and compares ChasingShakespeares to a best-selling novelby A.S. Byatt.

So did the Boston Globe in itslengthy review on June 9, which calledit “a smart, sexy, modern-day mysteryreminiscent of A.S. Byatt’s Posses-sion.” Opening with the question:“Who really wrote Shake-speare’splays?”, the reviewer says the “debatehas raged (albeit quietly) in the hallsof academia for decades. Now, itcomes to life in the able hands ofBrookline-based Sarah Smith.”

More recently, The New YorkTimes Book Review gave Smith’sbook major play, but its reviewer,Jeff Turrentine, “a writer living inLos Angeles,” was looking for a dif-ferent book. Instead of reviewing Smith’s,he wishes she had written “a nimble satire”or a non-fiction book “framing the debatefor lay readers” or a memoir on her conver-sion or a novel set in the Elizabethan era.Not very helpful for the reader of the re-view. At least, the reviewer did not rejectthe Oxfordian proposition, nor did he evenscorn it.

Sarah Smith is not only an accom-plished novelist, she is also an archivalresearcher with outstanding academiccredentials. She is a graduate of HarvardCollege, where she studied Shakespearewith the poet Robert Lowell and MarjorieGarber, a leading Shakespeare professor.Harvard University awarded her a Ph.D. inEnglish literature. She has taught at sev-

eral colleges. She is the webmaster of theMystery Writers of America, and a memberof the board of the Shakespeare Fellow-ship, publisher of this newsletter.

Adept at scholarly research papers aswell as historical mystery novels, she pub-lished a paper in last year’s Oxfordian

journal on “The Paine of Pleasure,” a long,anonymous poem ascribed to AnthonyMunday, which she came across while re-searching her novel. She demonstrates thatit is impossible that Munday wrote it andthat the likely author was Edward de Vere,seventeenth earl of Oxford. In April, shedelivered a paper on Angel Day’s The En-glish Secretarie at the seventh annual Ed-ward de Vere Studies Conference at Con-cordia University in Portland, Oregon.

Chasing Shakespeares is a literary de-tective story set in Boston, London, Strat-ford and Hedingham. It’s driven by stronglymotivated characters and should appeal toa wide range of readers but especiallythose in academia. It has the PR power-house of Simon & Schuster behind it. (As it

happens, co-founder Lincoln Schuster wasan Oxfordian.) Bookstores across the na-tion are sponsoring book signings for her.

In her novel, the detective chasing theShakespeares is a graduate student at North-eastern University who hopes to write abiography of the dramatist. Cataloguing a

collection of old documents, in-cluding many obvious forgeries, hecomes across a letter from WillShakspere of Stratford that seemsto be authentic. But, to his dismay,it indicates that he was not the au-thor of the plays and poems. Com-plications arrive in the person of arich, California “valley girl” who isresearching William Cecil, LordBurghley, at Harvard. She takes himto London first class to have a manu-script expert verify the letter’s au-thenticity and appraise its value.Torn by the possible loss of his be-loved Stratford man, running intoOxford at every turn, he suffers anagonizing reappraisal of what hebelieves, who he is and what it allmeans for his career and his imageof the man who wrote Shakespeare’sworks.

It’s a first-rate literary detectivestory with a struggling graduate stu-dent, a glamorous seductress, a beau-tiful would-be nun, deceptive villainsand a suspenseful plot line with all therequisite twists and turns. ProfessorsMarjorie Garber and Helen Vendlerof Harvard make cameo appearances,as do brothers Charles and WilliamBoyle of the Shakespeare Fellowship.One scene takes place at an Oxfordian

conference, and a few prominent Oxfordiansare pseudonymously limned among the sup-porting cast.

Sarah Smith was a devoted Stratfordianuntil she met Joanna Wexler, also ofBrookline, a Boston suburb. Wexler loanedher books and urged her to write aboutOxford. (Wexler, a woman of infectious en-thusiasm, also introduced Derek Jacobi tothe case for Oxford, and Jacobi is now aconfirmed Oxfordian.)

Smith’s three historical mysteries areThe Vanished Child (1992), The Knowl-edge of Water (1996)–both New York Timesnotable books–and A Citizen of the Coun-try (2000). She is currently working on anovel about the survivors of the Titanicsinking in 1912.

Chasing Shakespeares. By SarahChasing Shakespeares. By SarahChasing Shakespeares. By SarahChasing Shakespeares. By SarahChasing Shakespeares. By SarahSmith.Smith.Smith.Smith.Smith. New York: Simon & Schuster New York: Simon & Schuster New York: Simon & Schuster New York: Simon & Schuster New York: Simon & Schuster(Atria imprint), 2003.(Atria imprint), 2003.(Atria imprint), 2003.(Atria imprint), 2003.(Atria imprint), 2003.

By Richard F. WhalenBy Richard F. WhalenBy Richard F. WhalenBy Richard F. WhalenBy Richard F. Whalen

“I Don’t Believe in Oxford”



When delving into the life of theputative poet and playwright“William Shakespeare,” it may

well be said (irony intended) that there isless to the man than meets the eye. Neitherthe background, qualifications, nor thehistorical record, seem to support thehistorical William Shakspere as the Bard.Ron Hess, in the first book of his plannedtrilogy1 has undertaken an analogous ifsomewhat opposite task—he has examinedthe facts about the 17th Earl of Oxford,most likely the actual identity of the author“William Shakespeare,” and shows thatthere is much more to the man than meetsthe eye. Indeed, it would seem, if we are tobelieve Mr. Hess, that there is much moreto the “Shakespeare enterprise” than wehad ever imagined.

The “Shakespeare enterprise” is a keyconcept in Hess’s book. In his own words,“... The real question of importance shouldfirst be, ‘WHAT was Shake-spear?’” In theFirst Folio, Ben Jonson calls Shakespeare“Soule of the Age! ... Thou art a moniment[sic] without a tomb!” suggestingShakespeare’s purpose, that of definingthe character and tone of an age. Hess seesthe written works as only part of a largerundertaking, with Oxford playing aninternational role embodying a mythicalhero, the “Paladin of England,” identified(through Greek etymology) with PallasAthena as the “Spear-Shaker.” Whateverother role he may have had beyond that ofa writer, he was prominent, as a writer, inmolding opinion first at Court, then in theworld at large. That in itself is no smallmatter, for perception, image, whateverone might call it, counted a great deal inthose days, even as it does today.

According to Hess, the enterpriseinvolved a long-term alliance among acore group composed of Earls of Sussex,Oxford, and Pembroke, along with LordsHunsdon and Effingham, all with key rolesat Court and in the London stage. Beginningin the 1570s,2 “the alliance controlled thepublic and semi-public stages, but I argue

that the private homes3 of those in thealliance were where the ‘Shakespeare’ playseach were’originated.’”

The alliance used stage plays as a publicrelations part of its efforts for promotingits desired goals, both in the earlier periodwhen the author was anonymous and lateron when the pseudonym “Shakespeare”was introduced. The core of this alliancewas formed, according to Hess, as early as

1569-70: “Effingham and Hunsdon, alongwith Oxford, had served under Sussex inthe military campaigns of 1569-70 to putdown the Northern Rebellion . . . Sussex’score team were brothers in combat, andthey watched an ungrateful governmentalmost destroy Sussex in the midst of hiscommand. . . . Sussex literally lived on aknife-edge, and more important thanOxford’s honor and safety was the welfareof his allies.” This “band of brothers,” menwho had shared the rigors and perils ofboth battle and court intrigue, were bondedtogether as only companions-at-arms maybond among men, pursuing a commonagenda for themselves and for their nation,of which the “Shakespeare Enterprise” wasa part. The members of the alliance heldkey roles in shaping the cultural destiny ofEngland. Sussex and Hunsdon, assuccessive Lord Chamberlains of theHousehold, along with Effingham as

Sussex’s assistant, had authority for decadesover the censorship of plays, along withcontrol of the stage companies throughtheir underling, the Master of the Revels.These three, along with their ally, the Earlof Oxford (a.k.a. the “Lord GreatChamberlain”), held sway over the stagein its Elizabethan heyday through theirsponsorship and control of various actingcompanies: the Chamberlain’s Men (invarious incarnations), the Admiral’s Men(Effingham became Lord Admiral and,incidentally, commanded the fleet whichturned back the Spanish Armada in 1588),the combined Oxford’s/Worcester’s Men,and St. Paul’s Boys, under the tutelage ofOxford’s secretary, John Lyly. Accordingto Hess, the alliance later enlisted the 6thEarl of Derby, Oxford’s son-in-law, whowas sponsor of “Derby’s Men,” thencontinued even beyond the death of Oxfordwith the Herbert brothers, the Earls ofPembroke and Montgomery, the latteranother Oxford son-in-law. The Herbertseventually became the “incomparablepaire” who published the First Folio in1623.

What of Oxford’s role in history? It hasbeen said on the subject “People wantclear-cut answers, but history’s reallymessy”4: to a great extent though which weview the past “through a glass darkly,” withless evidence than one would like. However,history affords us some level ofcontemporary documentation of Oxfordin a role of the gathering of intelligence, aconcept pursued (if not originated) by Hess.In his landmark book, for instance,Charlton Ogburn Jr. tells us: “We have astrong indication from Gabriel Harvey ...that Oxford served as the eyes of the crownon his travels when he [Harvey] wrote inSpeculum Tuscanismi ‘not like the lynx tospy out secrets and privities of state.’”5

Hess further notes the testimony in ThomasChurchyard’s book Discourse of a voyageby Oxford and Churchyard in 1567 bearingmessages to the Prince of Orange in theNetherlands.

Hess remarks extensively on Oxford’spossible role in international intrigue,juxtaposed in the 1570s against Don Juanof Austria, natural half-brother to the Kingof Spain and the great military leader of theday, a role perhaps not as far-fetched as it

The Dark Side of Shakespeare: AnThe Dark Side of Shakespeare: AnThe Dark Side of Shakespeare: AnThe Dark Side of Shakespeare: AnThe Dark Side of Shakespeare: AnIron-fisted Romantic in England’sIron-fisted Romantic in England’sIron-fisted Romantic in England’sIron-fisted Romantic in England’sIron-fisted Romantic in England’sMost Perilous Times. Vol. 1 of III.Most Perilous Times. Vol. 1 of III.Most Perilous Times. Vol. 1 of III.Most Perilous Times. Vol. 1 of III.Most Perilous Times. Vol. 1 of III.By W. Ron Hess By W. Ron Hess By W. Ron Hess By W. Ron Hess By W. Ron Hess (iUniverse, 2002)(iUniverse, 2002)(iUniverse, 2002)(iUniverse, 2002)(iUniverse, 2002)

By Richard DesperBy Richard DesperBy Richard DesperBy Richard DesperBy Richard Desper


“The ‘Shakespeare“The ‘Shakespeare“The ‘Shakespeare“The ‘Shakespeare“The ‘Shakespeare

enterprise’ is a keyenterprise’ is a keyenterprise’ is a keyenterprise’ is a keyenterprise’ is a key

concept in Hess’s book...concept in Hess’s book...concept in Hess’s book...concept in Hess’s book...concept in Hess’s book...

[he] sees the written[he] sees the written[he] sees the written[he] sees the written[he] sees the written

works as only part ofworks as only part ofworks as only part ofworks as only part ofworks as only part of

a larger undertaking,a larger undertaking,a larger undertaking,a larger undertaking,a larger undertaking,

with Oxford playingwith Oxford playingwith Oxford playingwith Oxford playingwith Oxford playing

an international rolean international rolean international rolean international rolean international role

embodying a mythicalembodying a mythicalembodying a mythicalembodying a mythicalembodying a mythical

hero, the ‘Paladinhero, the ‘Paladinhero, the ‘Paladinhero, the ‘Paladinhero, the ‘Paladin

of England...’”of England...’”of England...’”of England...’”of England...’”



might seem at first glance. Oxfordianssuch as Holland6 and Clark7 have longnoted that the “Shakespeare” plays aboundwith topical references dated to that decade,including allusions to this Don Juan.Indeed, much of Volume I is devoted toHess’s identification of historicalpersonages with characters in the“Shakespeare” plays, identifying theplaywright as an intimate observer on thestage of international realpolitique, if notan active participant.

As Enoch Powell puts it, the Shake-speare plays “were the works of someonewho had been ‘in the kitchen’ . . . it comesstraight from experience.”8 And whilesome may take issue with Hess’s proposalthat Oxford made a voyage from Venice toTurkey in 1575, there is some evidencesupporting this. Oxford’s whereabouts areunaccounted for during several months ofthe summer of 1575, and he had earlierindicated in a letter: “the king [of France]has given me letters of recommendation tohis ambassador in the Turk’s Court . . .perhaps I shall bestow two or three monthsto see Constantinople, and some part ofGreece.”9 While Hess’s proposal issomewhat speculative, it is clearly labeledas such, has foundation in fact, and is worthbringing forth.

Hess’s book abounds with notes,appendices, references, an index, and abibliography which attest to the extensiveresearch involved in its preparation, a levelof research unmatched by orthodoxShakespeare scholars. He speaks with logicand clarity, as when he debunks theorthodox “voice of authority”10 in suchmatters as the dating of the plays.11 Hedeftly skewers their inconsistent logic, forinstance, as to what standards are to beaccepted or disdained as it suits theirpurposes in one instance vs. another. Hiswriting style exudes candor, freshness, andopenness—presenting the evidence,offering alternate interpretations(including his own, of course), and invitingreaders to draw their own conclusions.

For those who have found his speakingstyle entertaining, it has translated intohis written work as well, resulting in acolorful presentation, which abounds inHess’s rich personal literary images.

References:References:References:References:References:

1. Volume I of the trilogy was printed insoftcover in 2002, 620 pgs. $34.95, ISBN0-595-24777-6 (www.iUniverse.com).Volumes II and III, coming out in softcoverlater in 2003, were reviewed frompreprints.

2. Hess, Vol. II, preprint p. 12.5. Chapter 12in this volume delineates Hess’s proposalsabout the nature, composition, and extentof what he calls “the ShakespeareEnterprise.”

3. Many Elizabethan gentlemen and nobleshad private stages for plays in their homes;one survives today at Otley Hall inSuffolk, the ancestral home of the Gosnoldfamily.

4. Don Carleton, University of Texas, Austin,in U.S. News & World Report, 07/24/2000,pg. 331, quote by Hess at the beginning ofVolume I.

5. Charlton Ogburn Jr., The MysteriousWilliam Shakespeare: the Myth and theReality, EPM Publications, McLean, VA,1984, p. 530.

6. Adm. H. H. Holland, Shakespeare, Oxford,and Elizabethan Times, Archer, London,1933.

7. Eva Turner Clark, Hidden Allusions inShakespeare’s Plays, 3rd Ed., KennikatPress, New York, 1974.

8. Enoch Powell, former British cabinetmember, in the Frontline televisionprogram tape, “The ShakespeareMystery,” WGBH, Boston, 1991.

9. Katherine Chiljan, Letters and Poems ofEdward, Earl of Oxford, 1998, p. 17;Ogburn Jr., p. 542; B.M. Ward, TheSeventeenth Earl of Oxford, John Murray,

London, 1928, p. 102.10. Hess poses questions and offers his

opinions, an essential difference frommany orthodox scholars who often offertheir opinions as though they were facts.In Aristotelian logic, this is known as afallacious argument from authority”. In acourt of law, a qualified expert in his field—e.g. a forensic scientist or a physician—is allowed to offer his opinions in his fieldof expertise as though they were fact. Thisis the only carefully limited situation inwhich testimony of opinion, rather thanwitnessing to fact, is allowed in Anglo-American jurisprudence. The “fallacy”occurs when one misuses such a claim forauthority, arguing solely from authoritywithout facts to support one’s position.Oxfordians are well acquainted with suchabuses among orthodox scholars.

11. See Hess’ Appendix B in Volume IIregarding the controversy over dating ofplays.

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Book reviews (continued from page 26)

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A year in the lifeA year in the lifeA year in the lifeA year in the lifeA year in the lifeBy Hank WhittemoreBy Hank WhittemoreBy Hank WhittemoreBy Hank WhittemoreBy Hank Whittemore

1586: “Buy a thousand pound, buy a rope”

As the year 1586 dawned upon En-gland, government leaders increas-ingly feared attempts on Queen

Elizabeth’s life while preparing for potentialcivil war. The best they could do to protecther from assassination was to maintain “apowerful household guard,” Joel Hurstfieldwrites, and “an elaborate counter-espionagesystem to root out the plotters before theirplans were ripe.” The Queen’s ministers hadalready made clear that any such plot wouldresult in the execution of still- captive MaryStuart, Queen of Scots, and the exclusion ofher son, James of Scotland, from ever wear-ing the English crown.

“It is a chilling thought,” Hurstfield adds,“to call to mind that these eminent statesmenwould prefer to plunge England into a periodof bloody warfare rather than see a secondCatholic Mary sit on the throne of England.”

Meanwhile a reluctant Elizabeth had alsoaccepted that she must now strike againstSpain in the Netherlands before King Philip’sbuildup for an invasion was complete. Span-ish forces under Alexander of Parma werepushing the Dutch from one line of defenseto another, while the Catholic League inFrance had become openly allied with Spain,creating the propitious moment for an all-outattack on England. Having slowly and un-willingly accepted war as inevitable, Eliza-beth in 1585 had concluded a treaty with theNetherlands and promised an expensive armyof assistance. Hurstfield notes:

“If we are looking for a turning point inElizabeth’s reign, this is surely it. She wasnow fifty-two years of age, and, althoughshe had 18 years left to live and reign, shewould never know peace again. Her hopesof maintaining stability and security by dip-lomatic means had turned to ashes.” Nowthe Queen must “stretch and strain her re-sources almost to the breaking-point, live onher capital” and “scrape around for all man-ner of revenue” to save her life while pre-venting her country’s destruction.1

Five days after Antwerp had fallen toParma on August 19, 1585, Colonel JohnNorris left for Holland in charge of 4,000soldiers; and following along with 2,000additional men had been 35-year old Edwardde Vere, Earl of Oxford, who arrived at

Flanders a month later. William Cecil, LordBurghley wrote to inform the earl he hadbeen appointed Master of the Horse, butby mid-October he was returning homewhile his adversary Robert Dudley, Earl of

Leicester was set to take full command ofthe English presence in Holland. Whetherit was the Queen or Oxford himself who cutshort his mission is unknown, but gettingset to replace him in charge of the Horsewas Leicester’s nephew Philip Sidney,whom Elizabeth also made Governor ofFlushing.2

With these events in mind we maynotice a humorous portrait of Sidney in 2Henry IV as the comic character Poins.3

Prince Hal pokes fun at the “many pair ofsilk stockings” owned by Poins-as-Sidney,including “thy peach-colored ones” alongwith “the inventory of thy shirts, as one forsuperfluity, and another for use!” Thenthe future King Henry V makes obviousreference to the 1579 Oxford-Sidney tenniscourt quarrel (after which Elizabeth hadsupported Oxford by citing the lower rankof Sidney, who thereupon sulked off in ahuff), and to Sir Philip’s later commissionto the Low Countries:

But that the tennis-court keeperknows better than I, for it is a low ebb oflinen with thee when thou keepest notracket there; as thou hast not done agreat while, because the rest of thy lowcountries have made a shift to eat up thyholland. 2 Henry IV, 2.2.18-22

“Poins has not played tennis recentlybecause he has no spare shirt to changeafter exercising,” explains the RiversideShakespeare, adding that the “low coun-tries” or brothels had contrived to strip himnaked of his “holland” or fine linen.4 Tradi-tional editors also duly observe the pun onHolland suggested by low countries, butthey necessarily miss the great fun Oxfordwas having with Sidney’s “low ebb” orlower rank and self-imposed exile from theroyal tennis court, not to mention his morerecent government commission.

While de Vere might have written thescene with Poins before Sidney’s departurein November 1585, he would not have pennedit later than September 1586, when Sir Philipwas mortally wounded at Zutphen and be-came, in death, a national hero. These fewlines help uncover the dating of 2 Henry IVand reinforce Eva Turner Clark’s observa-tion that this play, ostensibly recreatingEngland’s past, also reflects the treason-able actions of the Babington plotters, whoaimed to murder Elizabeth and replace herwith Mary Stuart on behalf of Spain and thePope—a scheme brought to the brink offruition during 1586 by the crafty manipula-tions of Francis Walsingham, Secretary ofState, with the help of his state-sponsoredespionage network, and fully exposed thatAugust.

“The year 1586 was an important one inthe life of the Earl of Oxford,” Ms. Clarkwrites. “He had been disappointed in hishope for a military career when he wasrecalled a few months earlier from his postin the Low Countries. What filled his timeduring the first half of 1586 is not clear,although it is a reasonable conjecture thathe was busy arranging plays for the stage,even if not writing them himself, plays whichwould have a definite influence on the mindof the public and prepare it for the coming


“Elizabeth in 1585

had concluded a treaty

with the Netherlands

and promised an

expensive army of

assistance ...

If we are looking for

a turning point in

Elizabeth’s reign,

this is surely it.”



of the Spanish Armada, which in 1586 wasso obviously imminent.”5

June 21: Lord Burghley, writing to Sec-retary Walsingham about money mattersconcerning the war against Spain in theNetherlands, pauses to urge him to con-front the Queen about impending financialrelief for his son-in-law, requesting the busyspymaster to convey any news to his sonRobert Cecil on behalf of Anne Cecil: “I prayyou send me word if you had any commod-ity to speak with Her Majesty to speak formy Lord of Oxford and what hope there is,and if you have any, to let Robert Cecilunderstand it to relieve his sister, who ismore troubled for her husband’s lack thanhe himself.”6

Oxford’s financial position had beensteadily declining. Of the 56 separate salesof land during his lifetime, B. M. Wardreports, no fewer than 32 had been madebetween 1580 and 1585, a crucial time in therise of dramatic entertainment at the privateBlackfriars playhouse, at Court and in pub-lic theaters. “On the face of it there is littleto show for such a high expenditure,” Wardnotes, adding that de Vere’s life in thisperiod had been “remarkable for its lack ofostentation” while he had never been calledupon, at least not officially, “to undertakeany of those duties that so often impover-ished Elizabethan courtiers.”7

Yet just when events at home and abroadwere intensifying, the Lord Treasurer waspointedly reminding the Secretary of Stateof his role as go-between for news fromElizabeth in regard to Oxford’s purse strings.According to Burghley’s letter, however,the earl himself was far less concernedabout his dire financial straits than anyoneelse, including his wife.

June 23: The Government makes its mostsweeping attempt of the reign to exercisesevere control over publications. A Decree ofthe Star Chamber orders all books henceforthto be printed only in London, Oxford or Cam-bridge; Archbishop John Whitgift of Canter-bury and the Bishop of London must see andapprove all written material beforehand; andany literature that contradicts “the form andmeaning of any Restraint or Ordinance” is-sued by the Queen or her Privy Council willresult “upon pain to have all such presses,letters, and instruments” taken away “to bedefaced and made unserviceable for imprint-ing forever.” From now on England’s writerswill live under the strictest censorship.8

June 25: Oxford, writing to Burghleyfor a temporary loan of £200, provides moreevidence that Robert Cecil, 23, is risingwithin the Government; and he confirmsthat Secretary Walsingham has been pay-ing close attention to his needs by interced-ing with the Queen at Court on his behalf.

“My very good Lord,” the earl writes,“as I have been beholding unto you diverstimes & of late by my brother R. Cecil,whereby I have been the better able to

follow my suit, wherein I have some comfortat this time from Master SecretaryWalsingham, so am I now bold to craveyour Lordship’s help at this present. For,being now almost at a point to taste thatgood which Her Majesty shall determine,yet am I one that hath long besieged a fortand not able to compass the end or reap thefruit of his travail, being forced to levy hissiege for want of munition.”

Until recently Oxfordians have errone-ously assumed this letter was written onJune 25, 1585; but within the context of 1586it falls one day before the Queen will signthe order for a Privy Seal Warrant, grantingOxford a £1,000 annual allowance from theExchequer of the Treasury to be paid regu-larly in quarterly installments.9 His use ofmilitary language reflects the current war-time atmosphere, while his self-portrait asone unable to “reap the fruit of his travail”suggests he has been rendering services tothe Queen, and paying expenses himself,for a long time without compensation. Hegoes on to ask Burghley for the loan “till Her

Majesty performeth her promise”—a previ-ous pledge, it would seem, that Elizabethhad been extremely slow in fulfilling.10

The only discernible services Oxfordhad rendered, Clark notes, involved litera-ture, writing for the stage and maintaininghis acting companies. In the decade sinceOxford had returned from his Continentaltour in 1576, she contends, he had beenchurning out the first versions of nearly allthe immortal comedies, tragedies andchronicle histories which he would reviseand publish later: “The 10-year delay in thecoming of the Spanish soldier and sailormade possible to England and to the worldthe production of the world’s greatest dra-mas,” writes Clark, adding that by the endof 1586 the earl “had almost completed theseries of plays known since 1598 under thename of William Shakespeare.”11

By this reckoning de Vere had alreadycreated the foundational texts that he couldrevise at will, deleting or adding allusions ascontemporary situations warranted. Nowhe was also free to accept new challenges,just when Her Majesty along with Cecil andWalsingham needed his services most—tohelp rouse national unity amid potentialstruggles around the throne and promotepatriotic fervor against Spain.

June 26: Queen Elizabeth signs theWarrant commanding the Treasurer of theExchequer to pay Oxford an annual allow-ance of £1,000 with no accounting required.His grant comes via the same channels, bythe same formula, as the one first issued toWalsingham in July 1582 for activities of hisSecret Service, when her spymaster wasauthorized to receive £750 per year from theExchequer in quarterly installments. By nowthe Secretary’s annual grant has risen to£2,000, but that is as far as Elizabeth will go,even for her spymaster during the Armadayear of 1588. At this juncture, desperatelyneeding all available cash to secure her ownsafety and the survival of her realm, whilefunding an entire network of espionagerequiring continual payments to foreignand domestic spies, the Queen also decidesto support Edward de Vere in the samemanner.12

The singular grant raises a major ques-tion: In what relation to the Elizabethangovernment—if any— did Oxford help gen-erate and galvanize the renaissance of lit-erature and drama from the 1560s throughthe 1580s, culminating in the works of the1590s and beyond that were attributed to

Year in the Life (Continued from p. 27)

“In what relation to

the Elizabethan

government—if any—

did Oxford help

generate and galva-

nize the renaissance

of literature and

drama from the

1560s through

the 1580s...”



Shakespeare? Was he working primarily byhimself, for private ends? Or was he playingan invisible role within the government’sstructure, in service to the Queen andBurghley? Was Oxford a lone wolf or a teamplayer?

This column argues that all evidencepoints to a blend of extremes, revealing theLord Great Chamberlain as both “insider”and “outsider” – responding directly to thechallenges faced by his country, in accordwith the policies of its leaders, while follow-ing the dictates of his individual talent andconscience. Seen through this lens, a sin-gular genius was prompted to fulfill hisgreatness by extraordinary pressures,namely the twin threats of civil war andoutright war itself, during a unique time inhis nation’s history. In this view the “per-sonal” and “political” motives of Oxfordjoined to produce a result far greater thanthe sum of their parts.

In practical terms the argument is thathe aligned himself with Elizabeth andBurghley, along with Walsingham, to helpdefend the Queen against assassination,secure political-religious unity and survivethe attempt by Spain, sanctioned by thePope, to conquer England. Oxford is envi-sioned playing a multi-faceted role behindthe scenes that included, but was not lim-ited to, the issuance of his own works for thestage, as he gathered about him and patron-ized a number of literary men whom heprovided with working space, inspiration,guidance and freedom from the wartimesuppression of written words and speech.

Some of the writers—e.g., AnthonyMunday, Thomas Watson and ChristopherMarlowe—operated as Secret Serviceagents while using their artistic activities aspublic cover.13 Oxford would later extendhis veiled efforts for the Government toarenas such as the “Marprelate” pamphletwars on behalf of Archbishop Whitgift,with help from his private secretary JohnLyly along with Robert Greene and ThomasNashe, who each expressed Oxford’s ownideas and even had his own words pub-lished under their names.14

Nashe would inform readers in PiercePennilesse (1592) that “the policy of Playsis very necessary, howsoever some shal-low-brained censurers (not the deepestsearchers into the secrets of government)mightily oppugne them,” referring to theCrown’s deliberate “policy” that the censo-rious, zealous Puritans refused to appreci-

ate. Plays constituted a “rare exercise ofvirtue” because “the subject of them (forthe most part) is borrowed out of our En-glish Chronicles, wherein our forefathers’valiant acts are revived.”15

Nashe referred specifically to “braveTalbot” in 1 Henry VI by way of pointing tostage works recreating the nation’s royalhistory; but these would also have includedThe Famous Victories of Henry Fifth, 2Henry VI, 3 Henry VI, Richard III, The

Troublesome Reign of King John, KingJohn, Richard II, I Henry IV, 2 Henry IV,Harry of Cornwall, Henry V, Edward I,Edward II and Edward III—plays that inlarge and small ways evoked the invincibil-ity of English arms, encouraged patriotism,depicted the fate of disloyalty, promotedunity, advocated support for the reigninghouse, showed the consequences of rebel-lion and held up the Pope and Spain tomockery and contempt. Additional workswith political agendas were Coriolanus,Julius Caesar, Othello and Troilus andCressida, not to mention Tamburlane byMarlowe as well as others, many no longerextant.

Back in 1583 the Queen’s Men had beenformed at the suggestion of Walsinghamhimself. The Secretary had just received hisfirst regular allowance for espionage, fol-lowing years of having to finance it from hisown pocket; and now at his request, the 12best actors from existing companies were“sworn the Queen’s servants and allowedwages and liveries as Grooms of the Cham-

ber.”16 Performing at Court on Jan. 1, 1584,were Oxford’s Men, with Lyly as payee, butboth Oxford’s and the Queen’s companiesperformed at Court on March 3, 1584, withLyly again handling business—strong evi-dence that the two acting companies hadbeen amalgamated, with Oxford’s secretaryserving as manager and even as rehearsalcoach. In other words, soon after the headof the Secret Service had spawned HerMajesty’s own acting company, Edward deVere had rushed to contribute to its suc-cess.17

“I serve Her Majesty,” Oxford wrote toBurghley several months later, in October1584, “and I am that I am”—a thunderingprotest in God’s own words, reminding themost powerful man in England that he wasno mere spectator at Court, much as hisautobiographical Prince would leap fromself-imposed anonymity in the graveyardto declare, “This is I, Hamlet the Dane!”And an equally accurate version of Edwardde Vere’s life, which he kept from publicperception, would come from Iago: “I amnot that I am.”18

Oxford held no known office beyond hishereditary title, so most contemporariesmay have lacked any knowledge of hisservice; yet a decade later, in 1594, he wouldwrite to Cecil to complain about “sundryabuses, whereby both Her Majesty andmyself, were in mine office greatly hin-dered”—a word deliberately chosen by theman who would have Hamlet include theinsolence of “office” among the pitfalls ofa “weary life,” as Oxford himself toldBurghley in 1591 that he was “weary of anunsettled life.”19

In that letter of May 18, 1591, he won-dered if the Queen might commute his entireannual pension of £1,000 in return for asingle payment of £5,000, to purchase “some-thing that were mine own and that I mightpossess” so “my children be provided for”as well as “myself at length settled in quiet.”Oxford was looking ahead to remarriage andwithdrawing further from Court; and thoughhe became a virtual recluse, the Queencontinued his payments and King Jamesrenewed them until the earl’s death in 1604,adding up to £18,000 in 18 years.

Six decades later the Rev. John Ward,vicar of Stratford Parish in Warwickshire,recorded local rumors in his diary of 1661-1663 that “Shakespeare” had “supplied thestage with two plays every year and for that


“...in 1594 [Oxford]

would write to Cecil

to complain about

‘sundry abuses,

whereby both Her

Majesty and myself,

were in mine office

greatly hindered.’”



had an allowance so large that he spent atthe rate of £1,000 a year, as I have heard.”20

Even if the vicar failed to wonder how adramatist had received an “allowance” ratherthan an income, surely he marveled at itsamount, especially since William Shaksper’sentire cash estate had not exceeded £350.

Ward’s diary remained unpublisheduntil 1839 and J. T. Looney pulled Edwardde Vere from the shadows in 1920; but onlywhen B. M. Ward delved further into therecord did he and other Oxfordians realizethe earl himself had received “an allow-ance” of “£1,000 a year,” as the vicar hadheard. Clearly the legend drifting intoStratford retained, as legends often do,some essential elements of long-buried re-ality; and in this instance such kernels ofgossip about “Shakespeare” conflated withthe life of Shakspere were finally discov-ered, within the personal history of Oxford,to have been precisely the case. While Rev.Ward of Stratford was hardly an authorityon the Elizabethan stage, oral tradition itselfhas a way of intertwining fact with fictionuntil, after some filtering process, a fewpolished diamonds of truth remain.

A crucial turning point

When B. M. Ward reported the annualgrant in his 1928 biography of Oxford, heand others of the Oxfordian movement stoodat a crucial turning point in deciding how topresent their conclusions. The man whomLooney had found to fulfill the qualifica-tions of Shakespeare was no ordinary writerbut the highest-ranking earl of Elizabeth’sreign; he had been Her Majesty’s first royalward and had enjoyed her favor through the1570s, regardless of her disregard for hismilitary ambitions and personal finances.Now, on June 26, 1586, just as Elizabeth’spurse strings were being stretched by theneeds of national survival, this otherwiseparsimonious monarch granted him a largeannual pension from the same source as thefunds used by Walsingham for his unoffi-cial Secret Service:

And so to be continued unto him duringOur pleasure, or until such time as he shallbe by Us otherwise provided for to be insome manner relieved … and for the same orany part thereof … neither the said Earl norhis assigns … shall by way of account,imprest, or any other way whatsoever becharged towards Us...21

The reality of “Shakespeare” turned outto be even more significant than the truthretained by the legend. Not only had Edwardde Vere received an “allowance” of Treasurymoney while England was at war with Spainfrom 1586 to 1604, he had served Englandthrough an unnamed “office”—a term herepeated in his letter of 1594, admonishingBurghley “not to neglect, as heretofore, suchoccasions as to amend the same may arisefrom mine office.” Far from the writer having

been a commoner earning his way at the boxoffice, he had been a highborn earl engagedin work so valuable to the state he knew Cecil,the master architect of the reign, would recog-nize the most casual passing reference to it.

July 10: Just a few weeks after Elizabethsigns the Warrant for Oxford’s grant, theVenetian ambassador in Spain writes back tohis Senate and Doge that King Philip is furiousover reports he has been ridiculed in Englandby theatrical entertainments; and, he makesclear, Her Majesty and her Government aresanctioning these stage works: “What hasenraged him more than all else, and has causedhim to show a resentment such as he has neverbefore displayed in all his life, is the accountof the masquerades and comedies which theQueen of England orders to be acted as hisexpense. His Majesty has received a summaryof one of these which was recently repre-sented, in which all sorts of evil is spoken ofthe Pope, the Catholic religion, and theKing.”20A Obviously, Elizabeth is using thestage for political propaganda.

Oxfordians assimilating this informa-

tion from 1928 onward faced some dauntingperceptual challenges: “Shakespeare” hadbeen operating not on the sidelines of po-litical history but from the very center ofpolicy; Oxford was no mere substitute forthe great dramatist but, rather, the diametri-cal opposite of the grain dealer, money-lender and property owner fromWarwickshire.

Pioneers building evidence for Edwardde Vere might have announced:

“We have found that the phenomenon ofShakespeare was produced not only by anindividual genius as everyone has sup-posed, but simultaneously by an earl whoseefforts were authorized by the Cecilian gov-ernment of Elizabeth the First, which se-cretly helped to finance his literary andtheatrical activities. We have discoveredthat Shakespeare was a creature of ‘policy’working within an unacknowledged ‘office’of varied functions. He wrote independentlyas an artist who chose his own subjects andthemes, which coincided generally with theaims of the Tudor dynasty and the ProtestantReformation led by William and Robert Cecil.The Queen tolerated his often stinging witand merciless humor and compulsion tohold the mirror up to members of her Court,including herself; but because this Hamlet-like earl told more truth than could betolerated by the Cecils, whose tenure sur-vived beyond Elizabeth’s life, this true‘Shakespeare’ was almost totally obliter-ated from history by the same English gov-ernment he had expended his monumentaltalent, wisdom and energy to serve.”

In addition to the preserved record, inwhich Oxford had emerged only as a spend-thrift lord who wasted his patrimony andrequired a welfare pension to maintain thedignity of his earldom, promoters of hisauthorship confronted obstacles such as:

• Usual charges of snobbery againstthose advocating an earl as Shake-speare.

• Popular notions of “propaganda”as antithetical to the creation of greatart.

• Inescapable revisions ofEngland’s half-century history ofCecilian power.

• Inevitable skepticism about mat-ters of “conspiracy” and “secret” ser-vice.

• Orthodox teachings of Shake-speare as having been uninterested inpolitics.

Given these existing attitudes, Oxford-ians therefore presented their case—in part


“Oxfordians assimilating

this information

... faced some daunting

perceptual challenges:

‘Shakespeare’ had

been operating not on

the sidelines of political

history but from the

very center of policy...”



unconsciously—within a framework thatwas less radical and therefore significantlyweaker than what the evidence showed.While Edward de Vere’s lifelong connec-tion to the Queen and the Cecils was re-ported as factually important, it was notseen as intrinsic to the works he produced,and so he was seen as less of an insider orteam player and more of an outsider or lonewolf—just as William Shakspere had al-ways been. The distinction between thisretailed image of de Vere and the reality ofhis life may have appeared innocuous, butit produced a cumulative effect enablingorthodox opponents to argue that Oxford-ians were merely replacing the name of acommoner with that of an eccentric aristo-crat.

In a letter dated February 2, 1601, how-ever, Oxford testified in his own behalf byreminding Robert Cecil of his past servicesto the Queen, who had encouraged him tofinance activities for which (she led him tobelieve) he would be compensated. “But ifit shall please Her Majesty in regard of myyouth, time and fortune spent in her Court,adding thereto Her Majesty’s favors andpromises, which drew me on without anymistrust the more to presume in mine ownexpenses”—a recollection showing he hadbeen willing to give up his inherited richesto pursue a higher calling whose valueswere not only artistic and spiritual, but,inextricably, political.22

“IT’S THE POLITICS, ...!” Oxfordiansmight have announced with all the bold-ness of a tabloid headline, but instead theydownplayed this central dynamic orrelegated it to the less prominent pages oftheir works.

The history plays and propaganda

Ward argued in an obscure publicationof 1929 that “war-propaganda dramas” byOxford and others had been “initiated byQueen Elizabeth as a deliberate piece ofpolicy.” The last of the Tudor monarchshad “created a secret service Department ofState to carry this policy into effect” andhad “placed the Earl of Oxford at the headof this Department.”23

Clark in 1930 concluded the earl hadreceived his grant for work already accom-plished as well as for continuing servicesthat “we would today call ‘political propa-ganda,’ the medium then being the stage,”resulting in “the group of dramatic writers

usually spoken of collectively as the ‘Uni-versity wits’ … Play after play flowed fromtheir pens … mostly calculated to keeppeople at a high pitch of excitement duringwar time.”24

When Ruth Loyd Miller reprinted theWard article in 1975, she included a stunningfootnote running below the main text of adozen pages in barely readable typeface:

Cecil’s role in establishing the office of

propaganda, and placing his son-in-law overit, has been sadly neglected by historians.Yet it would be entirely out of character forCecil, whose “hand is seen” in everything,everywhere, during Elizabeth’s reign, not tohave had his hands on the reins of publicopinion. It would be entirely in accord withwhat is known of Cecilian ratiocination forCecil to feign disapproval of stage plays,“lewd” actors, and dramatists while, behindthe scenes, manipulating them for politicalpurposes.

The vitae of virtually every Elizabethanwriter in DNB shows Cecil lurking in theirshadows. Lyly and Munday, the mainstaysof Oxford’s dramatic staff, were both placedon that staff by Cecil. Lyly acknowledgesCecil “as a father.” Munday was renderingservice to the Cecil-Walsingham camp as aspy, infiltrating the Roman school, beforehe entered Oxford’s service.25

Miller notes that in 1559, the first year ofthe Queen’s reign, Spanish ambassadorCount de Feria had protested against “com-edies in London” deriding his King andclaimed Cecil “had supplied the authors ofthem with their themes and that Elizabeth

had practically admitted Cecil was the guiltyman.”26 This complaint, remarkably similarto the report of the Venetian ambassadornearly three decades later (July 10, 1586),provides solid evidence that both the Queenand her chief minister were deliberatingusing the stage for political purposes fromthe very outset and continually thereafter.

Historian Kevin Sharpe recounted theearlier incident in 1999:

Patronized by courtiers and under thecontrol of city magistrates, the theatre wasfrom its inception closely connected withthe government … Henry VIII and ThomasCromwell saw the potential value of theatreas a forum of propaganda and recruited JohnBale and Richard Moryson to write antipa-pal, and later Protestant, plays. Thoughafter Cromwell’s death Henry showed littleinterest in the stage, other government min-isters continued to use theatre for directpolitical ends: in 1559 the Spanish ambas-sador even accused William Cecil of provid-ing playwrights with material to mock PhillipII of Spain … The Privy Council clearlyrecognized the importance of plays in shap-ing public opinion.27

“Bale’s plays were performed almostexclusively in promotion of the ‘New Learn-ing’ by the companies of John de Vere andThomas Cromwell,” Miller continues, not-ing that commentators on King John havedecided that Shakespeare could not haveseen the unpublished manuscript of Bale’splay Kynge John, written and revised dur-ing Henry VIII’s reign. “It is no mystery atall, however, when Cecil, Oxford and ‘Shake-speare’ are brought together,” writes Miller,noting with Edmund Malone that uponElizabeth’s accession Bale again rewrotethe play (which may well have been thework angering de Feria in 1559) and that inAugust 1561 the players of John de Vere,16th Earl of Oxford, performed it for theQueen at Ipswich.

“Elizabeth spent a week that same Au-gust at Castle Hedingham, where she wasagain entertained by Earl John’s players,performing the plays of Bale … A year later… when Cecil gathered twelve-year-old EarlEdward into the fold of wardship, he tookpossession of all the young noble’s assets.Cecil, who had standing orders for his agentson the continent to supply him with copiesof books and publications of interest, would


“Ward argued in an

obscure publication of

1929 that ‘war-propa-

ganda dramas’ by

Oxford and others had

been ‘initiated by Queen

Elizabeth as a deliberate

piece of policy.’”



not have failed to appreciate the Earl ofOxford’s collection of Bale’s dramatic worksand move them to safekeeping … Undoubt-edly ‘Shakespeare’ saw Bale’s manuscriptplays, and undoubtedly he saw themthrough the eyes of Edward de Vere, whoowned many of them, in the Library at CecilHouse.”

We might add that the later-writtenanonymous play The Troublesome Reignof King John, undoubtedly the immediateforerunner of King John by Shakespeare(despite silly arguing by Stratfordians overwhich text came first), was presented ini-tially by none other than the Queen’s Men,the company established for Her Majesty in1583 by Walsingham with Oxford’s assis-tance. We might also add that Edward deVere must have been inspired as a young-ster by Bale’s Kynge John and gone on towrite Troublesome Reign followed by KingJohn, as a way of using distant Englishhistory to mirror Elizabeth’s current crisesrelated to bastardry, the Pope and MaryQueen of Scots.28

The grant’s significance

The conclusions made by Ward, Clarkand Miller about Oxford’s grant from theGovernment failed to capture wide publicattention. When Charlton Ogburn Jr. pub-lished The Mysterious William Shake-speare in 1984, making the authorship casefor de Vere far more accessible than before,he waited for 688 pages before probingimplications of the £1,000 annuity. Eventhen Ogburn was reluctant to expound inany detail, much less to shout POLITICS:“It seems to me reasonable,” he summed up,“to believe that Oxford received the grant asShakespeare, to finance his activities in thetheatre.”29

Given this ethereal treatment of thegrant, it is perhaps no wonder thatOxfordians today still appear tentative incoming to grips with its full significance. Atone extreme is the view expressed on thewebsite of Nina Green, moderator of theprivate Phaeton discussion group on theInternet, that it is a “myth”—or “Oxmyth”as a list on the site puts it—that the pensionwas given to Edward de Vere for any reasonbeyond the need to refurbish his pocket-book:

“The wording of the grant states that itis to continue during the Queen’s pleasure

or until Oxford can be otherwise providedfor to be in some manner relieved,” Greenemphasizes, adding this indicates “it is forOxford’s financial relief, not for secret ser-vice work.”30

The argument of this column, however,is precisely that a major reason Oxford hadfallen into financial ruin was that he (as inthe case of Secretary Walsingham himself)had financed his work on behalf of theCrown for at least a decade before theQueen, needing his services more than ever,finally came to the rescue. In that respectthe wording of the grant was true, but whatelse lay behind it? If indeed Elizabeth gaveOxford his annuity to compensate him forpast and future services not to be publiclyacknowledged, then neither she norBurghley would have enumerated them inwriting.

Although most orthodox scholars ofthe twentieth century have been unable toview “Shakespeare” as an author withpartisan political motives, much less as onewith an official mission to perform, a fewhave stared at the evidence without blink-ing:

Lily B. Campbell, 1947: “Each of theShakespeare histories serves a special pur-pose in elucidating a political problem ofElizabeth’s day and in bringing to bearupon this problem the accepted politicalphilosophy of the Tudors … Shakespeare,like all other writers who used history toteach politics to the present, cut his cloth tofit the pattern, and the approach to thestudy of his purposes in choosing subjectsand incidents from history as well as in hisaltering the historical fact is best made withcurrent (Elizabethan) political situations inmind.”31

Alvin B. Kernan, 1981: “Of all the majorwriters in the Western literary tradition,there is none who deals so consistently andso profoundly with political matters asShakespeare. He wrote almost exclusivelyof courts and aristocratic life; and matters ofstate, of law, of kingship and of dynasticsuccession are always prominent parts ofhis dramatic matter. This is true even incomedies … but it is even more obviouslytrue in Shakespeare’s history plays and inhis tragedies, where the political issues arethe very substance of the plays and wherecrucial matters of state are explored withremarkable precision and in great depth.”32

When such observations are coupledwith a view of Oxford writing the Shake-

speare works in relation to the pressingpolitical issues of his time, we are necessar-ily transported to the personal and particu-lar world of a great man responding to greatevents (from the vantage point of his rolewithin the Government itself) and penetrat-ing through their intertwining layers to theessential meaning of his experience. Alongthe way, the irrepressible Edward de Veremay have inserted some pertinent com-ments to help us comprehend him:

Allowance (Twelfth Night): “There isno slander in an allowed fool.”

Protection (Hamlet): “Tell him his prankshave been too broad to bear with and thatyour Grace hath screen’d and stood be-tween much heat and him.”

Control (Comedy of Errors): “I buy athousand pound a year, I buy a rope!”33

Note: Because of the importance of 1586 in thelife of Edward de Vere and England, this columnwill explore the year further in the next issue ofShakespeare Matters.

Endnotes:

1 Hurstfield, Joel, Elizabeth I and the Unityof England (London: English Universities PressLtd., 1960), 123-132

2 Ward, B. M., The Seventeenth Earl ofOxford (London: John Murray, 1928), 252;reprint by Ruth Loyd Miller, Jennings, LA.

3 “Poins” happens to begin and end with“P.S.”, the initials of Philip Sidney.

4 The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston:Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 938.

5 Clark, Eva Turner, Hidden Allusions inShakespeare’s Plays (Jennings, LA: MinosPublishing, 1974; first published in England in1930), 796.

6 Transcript of the June 21, 1586 letter sentto the columnist courtesy of Robert Detobel.

7 Ward, op. cit., 256.8 Chambers, E. K., The Elizabethan Stage

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), “Documentsof Control,” 303.

9 Alan Nelson’s Home Page, http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/PERSONAL/86025.html; heretofore the letter appeared tomake perfect sense as dated June 25, 1585, in thecontext that Oxford was awaiting militaryappointment to the Netherlands; but Nelsoncorrects it to 1586, explaining that the top halfof the “6” had been cut off. This letter of 1586stands alone between those of Oct. 30, 1584,and Aug. 5, 1590, among the survivingcorrespondence of Oxford, but surely he hadwritten many more letters.

10 Fowler, William Plumer, ShakespeareRevealed in Oxford’s Letters (Portsmouth, NH:Peter E. Randall, 1986), text of the letter, 342.

11 Clark, op. cit., 799.12 Read, Conyers, Mr. Secretary




Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth(New York: AMS Press, 1978), vol. 2, 370-371,citing Warrants of Issue under the Privy Seal,Elizabeth, Bundle 124.

13 Among the accounts of writer-agents isThe Reckoning by Charles Nicholl aboutMarlowe; (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1995 edition); on Munday, 173-176; on Watson,177-184.

14 Campbell, O. J., The Reader’sEncyclopedia of Shakespeare (New York: MJFBooks, 1966): “In desperation the bishopsturned to professional writers, including ThomasNashe, John Lyly, and Robert Greene …Archbishop Whitgift employed Nashe and JohnLyly to answer the attacks” – 502, 580,demonstrating that orthodox scholars have notrouble envisioning collaboration by theGovernment and writers, not to mention“employment” of writers by the Archbishopwho serves the Queen, Burghley and PrivyCouncil; but once Oxford is inserted into thepuzzle, we may conclude he was the chief writerand liaison as well as the paymaster.

15 McKerrow, Ronald B., The Works ofThomas Nashe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958,from the first edition of 1904), vol. III, 211-12.

16 Chambers, op. cit., “The AdultCompanies,” 104.

17 The play performed on the night of Jan.1, 1584, at Court was Campaspe, attributed toLyly; it was rehearsed at Blackfriars (Oxfordhad given him the lease of the hall in summer1583) and performed for the Queen by HerMajesty’s Children and the Children of Paul’s:Adams, J. Q., Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas(Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1924),609-610; the play at Court on March 3, 1584,was probably Sapho and Phao: Ward, op. cit.,271, citing Chambers, op. cit., vol. 3, 414-15.

18 Oxford to Burghley: “I am that I am” –

postscript in his hand, Oct. 30, 1584 (Fowler,op. cit., 321); “This is I” – the Prince in Hamlet,5.1.217; “I am not that I am” – Iago inOthello,1.l.65.

19 Oxford to Burghley, May 18, 1591 andJuly 7, 1594 in Fowler, op. cit., 393, 484.

20 Campbell, op. cit., 936.20A Clark, op. cit., 796, citing Calendar of

State Papers, Venetian, VIII, 182.21 Text of the grant in Ward, op. cit., 257.22 The letter of Feb 2, 1601, in Fowler, op.

cit., 558.23 Miller, Ruth Loyd, “Oxfordian Vistas” in

Shakespeare Identified (Port Washington, NY:Kennikat Press, 1975), 454-482; reprints ofarticles by Ward, Capt. B. M., “Shakespeareand the Anglo-Spanish War 1585-1604” in RevueAnglo-American, Dec. 1929; and Ward, Col.Bernard R., “Shakespeare and Elizabethan WarPropaganda” in The Royal Engineers Journal,Dec. 1928.

24 Clark, op. cit., 803.25 Miller, op. cit., extended footnote 469-

481.26 Miller, op. cit., 472-73, citing Cal. S. P.

Spanish, 1558-67.62.27 Sharpe, Kevin, “Representations and

Negotiations, etc.,” The Historical Journal(Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press,1999), 42.3.858-59.

28 Bale first wrote his two-part play KyngeJohn by 1536; under Cromwell’s patronage forHenry VIII he formed an acting company toperform plays in favor of the Reformation; herevised Kynge John in 1538 and later underEdward VI; then upon Elizabeth’s accession of1558 he made more revisions; the two-partTroublesome Reign of King John was performedby the Queen’s Men in the 1580s and publishedwith no author cited in 1591; and King John byShakespeare, introducing the fictitious hero the

Bastard, was cited by Meres in 1598 but printedfirst only in the Folio of 1623. I would argue thatOxford had developed Troublesome Reign inthe 1560s or 1570s and that he first set forthKing John by 1582. A traditional dating markerhas been Holinshed’s Chronicles of 1587 as asource of King John, but I argue in this case that,to the contrary, it was Oxford who influencedHolinshed.

29 Ogburn Jr., Charlton, The MysteriousWilliam Shakespeare (McLean, VA: EPMPublications, 1984, 1992 revised edition), 688 .

30 The Oxford Authorship Site, by NinaGreen, http://www3.telus.net/oxford/

31 Campbell, Lily B., Shakespeare’s‘Histories’: Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy (SanMarino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1965,copyright 1947), 125; Riverside, op. cit., 805,agrees that King John, “suggests the tangledrelationships between Elizabeth, her cousinMary Stuart, and the King of Spain.”

32 Kernan, Alvin B., “Shakespeare and theRhetoric of Politics” in Politics, Power, andShakespeare (Arlington: University of Texas atArlington, 1981), 47.

33 Twelfth Night, 1.5.90-91; Hamlet, 3.5.2-4; Comedy of Errors, 4.1.21. It appears that Dr.Roger Stritmatter first noted the significance of“I buy a thousand pound a year, I buy a rope”;The Marginalia of Edward de Vere’s GenevaBible (Northampton, MA: Oxenford Press,February 2001), 39. He points out that Dromioof Syracuse in Errors also refers to “both mineoffice and my name” (3.1.44) leading to hiscomment about “a rope” or leash. Editor BillBoyle independently cited the “rope” commentwhen suggesting in a Phaeton group discussionthat the “Shakespeare” plays could provideappropriate commentary on Oxford’s compli-cated role as a playwright—Allowance, Protec-tion, Control—in Elizabeth’s England.

to a more conclusive end, Professor Wrightwill be conducting more research at theBritish Society of Genealogists in Londonlater this summer to ascertain if there areany records yet unexamined that mightestablish the existence of James CortonCowell and Arthur Cobbold as late-18th/early 19th-century men in East Anglia.

Professor Wright is also hopeful thatthe University of London will allow him toengage experts to test the age of the paperon which the manuscript was written (theUniversity of London has yet to conferpermission for such a test). He reportedthat such a test is vital, for if the paper canbe established to be of later manufacturethan the late 18th/early 19th century, theassumption of fraud in its compositionwill be proven correct, and the need tocontend for a forgery on the basis of absentprincipals will be obviated. Other tests that

he wishes to conduct include examina-tions by expert paleographers of the handin which the Cowell address was written inorder to compare it to handwriting of theage and the handwriting of candidates whomight be considered leading suspects inadvancing this likely forgery.

When asked why this probably-forgeddocument might have been created—andunder such peculiar circumstances—Pro-fessor Wright answered that, in his ap-praisal, the document probably was in-tended to steal the thunder of the Oxfordianjuggernaut that had been launched by JohnThomas Looney’s 1920 publication of“Shakespeare” Identified in Edward deVere the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. If,Professor Wright declared, Bacon couldbe shown to have had thoughtful, educatedsupporters as early as 150 years after thedeath of the Stratford man, new attentionand the conventional British respect ac-

corded antiquity might “jump start”Bacon’s fading candidacy. Attention, theforger may have reasoned, might be de-flected from the rising anti-Stratfordianstar, Edward de Vere, and Bacon mightthereby regain the foothold among anti-Stratfordians that, in 1932, he was rapidlylosing as a candidate for the authorship ofShakespeare’s works.

We await with excitement the work,insights and discoveries of Drs. Wright,Rollett and Rubinstein in their continuinginquiries into this likely Baconian fraud,and we look forward to Professor Wright’splanned transcription and publication ofthis document with a revelation—if a rev-elation is possible—of who may have writ-ten the mysterious manuscript that fantas-tically appeared without any provenancein the Edwin Durning-Lawrence library atthe University of London in 1932.

Wilmot did not (cont’d from page 7)



By Chuck BerneyBy Chuck BerneyBy Chuck BerneyBy Chuck BerneyBy Chuck Berney

Confidential Video BardConfidential Video BardConfidential Video BardConfidential Video BardConfidential Video Bard

Taming of the Shrew: Zeffirelli and Miller

The Taming of the Shrew (1967) wasstage director Franco Zeffirelli’s firstfilm. Starring what was then the

world’s most famous couple, Richard Bur-ton and Elizabeth Taylor, it came on theheels of their disastrous (but well-publi-cized) version of Cleopatra.

The first 10 minutes of the film are adelight. We follow Lucentio (Michael York,in his film debut) and Tranio (Alfred Lynch)through the hills of Lombardy into Padua,which is bursting with medieval life.Zeffirelli displays the talent for suffusingthe film with the look and feel of the Italiansetting that he used to such good effect inhis version of Romeo and Juliet, releasedthe following year. But after the first 10minutes, the overacting begins. MichaelHordern, as Baptista, bumbles andstumbles, rolls his eyes and purses his lips(attentive readers will recall that Hordernwas not my favorite Lear). Victor Spinetti,who was droll as the neurotic technician inthe Beatles movies A Hard Day’s Night andHelp, plays Hortensio with a mincing man-ner and a Doris Day wig, calling so muchattention to his efforts to be funny that heisn’t. I have the feeling that Zeffirelli, draw-ing on his stage experience, encouragedeveryone to play broadly, with the resultthat Hordern and Spinetti gave stage per-formances, while York and Lynch miracu-lously escaped. As did Cyril Cusack, whosesly Grumio is always amusing.

Richard Burton’s characterization ofPetruchio is opaque to me. In half thescenes he is a brawling, drunken lout,while in the other half he seems to be areasonable man using rational methodsto pursue achievable goals. I can’t connectthe dots, so ultimately I don’t find theperformance satisfying. As Kate, ElizabethTaylor just exists—she’s an icon ratherthan an actress.

The film is always marvelous to lookat—Zeffirelli has a fine eye for integratingarchitecture, fabrics, costumes and light-ing so that every frame is visually satisfy-ing. The screenwriters have trimmed abouthalf the dialog, sometimes replacing itwith interpolated scenes not in the originaltext, such as Kate’s tumble into the river on

the way to Verona, or the wedding itself,which occurs offstage in the original. AndI have come to appreciate the final 20minutes of the film, which documents thelast stage of Kate’s conversion. As Kate and

Petruchio are about to enter Lucentio’shouse for the wedding feast, he stops herand says “Kiss me, Kate.” She says “What,here in the street?” He asks if she is ashamedof him; she replies, “No, God forbid, butashamed to kiss.” Finally, she relents andgives him a platonic peck on the nose.Petruchio looks disgruntled, but they pro-ceed to the banquet. The turning pointcomes when Kate, watching childrenroughhousing between the tables, meltsperceptibly (maybe Taylor is an actressafter all). Apparently she at last sees herselfin a domestic union ruled by cooperationrather than confrontation, and so is able torise to the challenge of the obedience wa-ger, and during her speech to the frowardwives she discovers the pleasure of using

socially accepted means to continue tobeat up on Bianca. Petruchio again says“Kiss me, Kate,” and she responds withgenuine intensity.

In my last column I castigated BBCdirector Jonathan Miller for giving MichaelHordern the title role in his production ofLear. In this column I offer enthusiasticpraise for his decision to cast Monty Pythonalumnus John Cleese as Petruchio in hisproduction of Shrew (1980). Cleese hasmastered the art of making the dialogsound like he just thought of it, so hisPetruchio is natural, immediate, and con-vincing—as intelligent as Cleese himself,and surprisingly gentle. Sarah Badel’s Kateis a worthy opponent; their wooing scene(2.1.182) is hilarious. In this exchange, theplaywright achieves a bawd rate approach-ing unity—that is, almost every line con-tains a salacious double entendre (the cor-responding scene in the Zeffirelli produc-tion falls flat because most of the lines havebeen cut, and what remains is overwhelmedby slapstick struggles).

Miller has written that his approach toa production is sometimes determined bya single line of text, in the same way that apaleontologist reconstructs the entire bodyof an extinct animal from an isolated frag-ment. I believe that his treatment of thefinal third of Shrew was inspired byVincentio’s reference to Kate as “my merrymistress” (4.5.53). Petruchio and Kate aretraveling back to Padua, and he has got herreluctantly to agree that the object shiningin the sky is the “moon, or sun, or what youplease.” An old man (Vincentio) approachesthem on the road; Petruchio addresses himas “fair lovely maid” and bids Kate “em-brace her for her beauty’s sake.” By nowKate has gotten into to spirit of the thingand goes over the top: “Young buddingvirgin, fair, fresh, and sweet . . . Happy theparents of so fair a child! Happier the manwhom favorable stars allot thee for hislovely bedfellow!” Then when Petruchio,deadpan, corrects her—“Why, how now,Kate, I hope thou art not mad. This is a man,old, wrinkled, faded, withered”—the ab-surdity of the scene overwhelms her, andshe collapses, shrieking with laughter. It’s

“The film is always“The film is always“The film is always“The film is always“The film is always

marvelous to look at—marvelous to look at—marvelous to look at—marvelous to look at—marvelous to look at—

Zeffirelli has a fineZeffirelli has a fineZeffirelli has a fineZeffirelli has a fineZeffirelli has a fine

eye for integratingeye for integratingeye for integratingeye for integratingeye for integrating

architecture, fabrics,architecture, fabrics,architecture, fabrics,architecture, fabrics,architecture, fabrics,

costumes and lighting...”costumes and lighting...”costumes and lighting...”costumes and lighting...”costumes and lighting...”

* * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * *

I believe thatI believe thatI believe thatI believe thatI believe that

[Miller’s] treatment[Miller’s] treatment[Miller’s] treatment[Miller’s] treatment[Miller’s] treatment

of the final third ofof the final third ofof the final third ofof the final third ofof the final third of

ShrewShrewShrewShrewShrew was inspired by was inspired by was inspired by was inspired by was inspired by

Vincentio’s referenceVincentio’s referenceVincentio’s referenceVincentio’s referenceVincentio’s reference

to Kate as ‘myto Kate as ‘myto Kate as ‘myto Kate as ‘myto Kate as ‘my

merry mistress.’”merry mistress.’”merry mistress.’”merry mistress.’”merry mistress.’”



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a wonderful moment, and it’s the turningpoint for this Kate—hanging out withPetruchio is a lot more fun than throwingstools at Bianca. So when he asks for a kissbefore they enter the banquet, she respondspassionately, and he murmurs “Is this notwell?”

Stephen Moorer’s Pacific RepertoryTheatre will be performing its version ofShrew during the Shakespeare Fellow-ship’s fall conference in Carmel, 9-12 Oc-tober 2003. We have seen that the arc ofKate’s metamorphosis varies from pro-duction to production; it will be interest-ing to see how Moorer stages it.

Several years ago I was in a productionof Kiss Me, Kate, the great Cole Portermusical which opened on Broadway in1948. The most effective scenes in theshow were the ones lifted directly fromShrew—they had a zest and sparkle thatfar outshone the by-the-numbers fooleryof the scenes forming the contemporaryplot. But now when I watch Shrew as astraight play, certain lines (“I’ve come towive it wealthily in Padua,” “Where is thelife that late I led?”) seem flat and emptywhen spoken, as if crying out to be sung.Why not do a show that combines the bestof both worlds: a stripped-down version ofShrew that incorporates Porter’s wonder-ful songs?

If there’s anybody out there with a lot ofmoney, please contact me, and I’ll startwork on the script right away. The workingtitle is Kiss Me, Shrew.

Michael York on ShrewFellowship member Michael York has gra-ciously given Shakespeare Matters per-mission to reprint material from his auto-biography Accidentally on Purpose (Simon& Schuster, New York, 1991). Chapter 10describes preparations for his film debutin Franco Zeffirelli’s Taming of the Shrew(1967).

In Rome Iwas plungedinto a plethoraof preparations.There were ward-robe fittings andmakeup tests. Ata ladies’ hair sa-lon, alongsidesome amusedmatrons, myhair was bleach-ed and permed,

and at a stable, alongside some indifferenthorses, I was taught the rudiments of riding.I waited anxiously for Zeffirelli’s call, ex-pecting that he would want to rehearse.Finally, on the Sunday before the first dayof shooting, I was invited to lunch at hiscomfy, old-fashioned apartment in the viaDue Macelli.

Ever convivial, Franco presided over alarge round table of family and friends thatincluded Edward Albee as well as that polestar of the ballet world, Eric Bruhn, and its

sensational new comet Rudolf Nureyev.Our host could have been relaxing on holi-day rather than about to embark on his firstmultimillion-dollar film. I continued towait with mounting anxiety. Then, as day-light faded, he took me aside and brieflyoutlined his intentions for the role. Hisapproach was essentially pragmatic yetobviously grounded on thorough prepara-tion—one that I share and try to emulate.Above all I valued his implicit trust.

After a fitful sleep, I was driven out tothe de Laurentiis Studios in the predawnquiet. To see the great cities of the worldbefore they have come fully awake is oneof the unexpected treats that cinema af-fords. The view of the Colosseum risingdreamlike against a purple pink sky was noexception.

The brightness of the busy makeuproom came as a shock. I was sat down in achair and with a Borgia malevolence mysleepy face was shocked awake with a coat-ing of strong-smelling spirit gum. To this,a beard was laboriously fixed, glued onhair by hair, protracting the torment. Hot,smoking tongs then curled the appendedfuzz as well as my unnaturally blondedhead. To this day the merest whiff of spiritgum awakens memories of those hoursspent squirming and gagging in thattorturer’s chair, and the revulsion revives.

On that first morning I was in the very(Continued on page 36)

Michael York in Tamingof the Shrew.



Shakespeare MattersShakespeare MattersShakespeare MattersShakespeare MattersShakespeare MattersThe Voice of the Shakespeare FellowshipThe Voice of the Shakespeare FellowshipThe Voice of the Shakespeare FellowshipThe Voice of the Shakespeare FellowshipThe Voice of the Shakespeare FellowshipP. O. Box 263P. O. Box 263P. O. Box 263P. O. Box 263P. O. Box 263Somerville MA 02143Somerville MA 02143Somerville MA 02143Somerville MA 02143Somerville MA 02143Address correction requestedAddress correction requestedAddress correction requestedAddress correction requestedAddress correction requested

Inside this issue:Inside this issue:Inside this issue:Inside this issue:Inside this issue:Edward de Vere StudiesEdward de Vere StudiesEdward de Vere StudiesEdward de Vere StudiesEdward de Vere Studies

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Authorship debateAuthorship debateAuthorship debateAuthorship debateAuthorship debateat Smithsonian - page 1at Smithsonian - page 1at Smithsonian - page 1at Smithsonian - page 1at Smithsonian - page 1

A new ShakespeareA new ShakespeareA new ShakespeareA new ShakespeareA new Shakespearereference found - page 16reference found - page 16reference found - page 16reference found - page 16reference found - page 16

Oxford’s 1586 changes toOxford’s 1586 changes toOxford’s 1586 changes toOxford’s 1586 changes toOxford’s 1586 changes tohis heraldry - page 20his heraldry - page 20his heraldry - page 20his heraldry - page 20his heraldry - page 20

Book reviews - page 24Book reviews - page 24Book reviews - page 24Book reviews - page 24Book reviews - page 24

Year in the Life: 1586 - page 27Year in the Life: 1586 - page 27Year in the Life: 1586 - page 27Year in the Life: 1586 - page 27Year in the Life: 1586 - page 27

Video Bard: Video Bard: Video Bard: Video Bard: Video Bard: Taming ofthe Shrew - page 34page 34page 34page 34page 34

Video Bard/York (cont’d from page 35)first shot of the film. There was an electricair of expectancy. Time was now a measurenot of minutes but of dollars. Bundled intodoublet and tights, the last of my innumer-able bows and laces were being tied as I wasescorted to a set that swarmed with activ-ity. Speedily hatted and cloaked, I wasthrust onto my horse. “Silenzio!” Thehubbub abated. “Motore!” The camerastarted to whir and my horse quivered witha contained excitement. Conspicuouslymore experienced than I was, at “Azzione!”it moved off and, utterly contemptuous ofall my energetic spurring, went at its ownpace precisely to its marks.

I was grateful for such assured profes-sionalism for the shot required me to ridedown a steeply raked street into Paduawhile quoting a sizable passage ofShakespearean verse. Fortunately, realityassisted illusion. I was meant to be over-whelmed with excitement and anticipa-tion and that is exactly how I felt. So muchso, in fact, that Zeffirelli had to keep direct-ing me to look less pop-eyed! By nineo’clock he had ordered “Print” and myscreen baptism was over. There had simplybeen no time to be nervous.

That whole day I felt supremely alive.My love at first sight for Bianca was matchedby my own for this new medium. I knewinstinctively that I belonged to its world oflenses and lights just as surely as my namebelonged on the canvas chair to which itwas now proudly affixed. Everything de-lighted and the work flowed with an intui-tive ease. Dining that evening with AlfredLynch, who played my servant Tranio, I

poured out my enthusiasm with thecelebratory Chianti, totally intoxicated bythe day’s adventures.

I seemed to adjust quickly to the de-mands of the camera, never finding itspresence intrusive or disturbing. I didn’tmind the frequent repetition, although itsurprised me at first to see how muchcoverage was required for even a relativelysimple sequence. Franco was constantlyinventive, cleverly suiting the action to theactor’s intrinsic nature so that his direc-tion seemed unforced. For fun he wouldask for one take to be filmed in a restrained“English” style, and the next in a flamboy-ant “Italian” manner with gestured, extro-vert behavior. His best effects were achievedthrough a synthesis of the two. I couldunderstand why he liked working withEnglish actors; their cool sang-froid neu-tralized his slightly operatic excesses.

He was a visual perfectionist. RenzoMongiardino had re-created medievalPadua within the giant enclosed space. Itspatinaed walls, courtyards and cobbledstreets were lit day-bright by batteries ofoverhead lights, creating an out-of-seasonsummer and much thirsting and fanning.Extras were handpicked, Franco even us-ing some light-skinned blond people froma nearby village, formerly imported byMussolini from the north to work in therice fields, for his Lombards. The youthfulhordes of long-haired “Capelloni” haunt-ing the Spanish Steps were also roundedup and, along with others, including hisown dear aunt and the young Burton chil-dren, were costumed and co-opted to hislively creation.

A few weeks later the Burtons startedwork and I was moved to learn that some oftheir initial footage was later reshot. Real-izing that even these consummately expe-rienced actors could experience unease, Ifelt pangs of nerves. For our stars, thefantasies and pageantry of the set werematched by their life off it. Chauffeured towork by Rolls Royce, they were there min-istered to by maids, secretaries and butlersas well as hairdressers and makeup artists.Their suite of dressing rooms was palatial,replete with kitchen and office and car-peted throughout with virgin whiteness. Iwas happy to have my own modest dressingroom where, between takes, I taught my-self to speak Italian, learning as with alllanguages the rude words first.

The Burtons also held court to legionsof visitors and journalists including thelegendary Sheilah Graham who, flatter-ingly, found time to chat to me too. Theygave a lavish party at their rented villa onthe Appia Antica and it was good to experi-ence at firsthand the exotic dolce vita hith-erto but glimpsed at in the films of Felliniand Antonioni. Both Elizabeth and Rich-ard were enormously kind and I am foreverindebted to them for agreeing, as produc-ers, to have me in their film.

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