About the Shakespeare Authorship Question

5 july 2014

About the Shakespeare authorship question

Eduard Roth

1 1 Overview of the authorship question

The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument about whether some- one other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. Among the candidates, one can ﬁnd Francis Bacon, the Earl of Derby, Christopher Marlowe, the Earl of Oxford and many others. A discussion of the authorship question can be found in many places. We propose here a new line of investigation.

2 A short biography of William Shakespeare in our view

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was the illegitimate son of Walter Dev- ereux, 1st Earl of Essex (1541-1576) and a woman of jewish origin called Susanna, in english spelling. He was born in 1564 in some unknown place and baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon on 26 april 1564. There is no docu- ment proving his actual birthdate. He was brought up by John Shakespeare, an alderman, and his wife Mary Arden. At age 18 he married the 26-year- old Anne Hathaway and had three children: Susanna, born in 1583 and the twins Hamnet (English form of the German name Hamlet) and Judith. Be- tween 1585 and 1592, little is known about the activity of William. Most probably he was educated during those years (called ‘lost years’) at Cam- bridge University. In 1592, he is mentioned as part of the London scene. He wrote in the following years 38 plays, 154 sonnets and a few other poems. Around 1613-14 he retired to Stratford where he died on 23 april 1616, at age 52. He was therefore half-brother of Robert Devereux (born 1565), 2nd Earl of Essex, who died in unfortunate circumstances in 1601. William knew at Cambridge the Earl of Southampton and of Robert Cecil, both educated at St.John’s College at about the same time as him. He was also probably the lover of the Earl of Southampton.

3 The identiﬁcation of Walter Devereux as the father of William Shakespeare in the play ‘Ham- let’

By swapping letters, the name HAMLET converts into WALTER after using some tricks that are common in XVII century cryptography. These tricks are: M=W (reversed M), H=X=any letter of the alphabet, X=R in our case.

2 In the play, the name ‘Hamlet’ is used for the name of the main character of the play and also for his father, King Hamlet, only appearing as a ghost. We believe however that WALTER is the name of Shakespeare’s father, and that the main character is Shakespeare himself. In Act III scene 2 (85) we can read the following dialog: Hamlet (to Horatio): There is a play tonight before the king. One scene of it comes near the circumstance which I have told thee of my father’s death, etc... In the play in question, King Hamlet is poisoned by the lover of his wife (Claudius) and just two months later Claudius marries the widow. This episod resembles surprisingly to the death of Walter Essex in Dublin in 1576 in strange circumstances, never elucidated, and the marriage of his widow, Lettice Knollys, two years later, to Robert Dudley, Earl Leicester, a well-known lover of Queen Elizabeth I. It will be argued later that the character Claudius is precisely Robert Dudley in the play ‘Hamlet’. It is also interesting to note the following dialog In Act V scene 2 (220): Hamlet (to Laertes): Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong (...) Free me so far in your most generous thoughts that I have shot my arrow o’er the house and hurt my brother. Therefore Hamlet calls Laertes his ‘brother’. As will be argued later, Laertes is in reality his half-brother, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. We can also discuss the identiﬁcation of Walter Devereux as the father of William Shakespeare in Sonnet 135. The second verse of Sonnet 135 reads

And will to boot, and will in overplus and by swapping letters, IN.OVERPLUS converts into IL.SON.EVREUX, that is illegitimate son of D’Evreux. As usual the letter X is used to match any letter of the alphabet, X=P in our case. We can also note that the surname Devereux is the same as D’Evreux in french spelling.

4 The identiﬁcation of the main characters in the play ‘Hamlet’

The character POLONIUS has often been identiﬁed with WILLIAM CECIL, his son ROBERT CECIL, or a mixture of both. We agree with this identi- ﬁcation, but in addition we explain why Lord CECIL is called POLONIUS. The reason is that Lord CECIL was a fanatic supporter of war against Spain in the Netherlands. At this point, one has to note that in the play ‘Hamlet’, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Germany and England should by replaced most

3 of the time by England, Scotland, The Netherlands, France and Ireland, respectively. Therefore Poland is Holland. The case for replacing ‘King Hamlet’ by Walter Essex has been discussed before. For the same reason, his son Hamlet should be identified with William Shakespeare himself. Concerning LAERTES, we note that by swapping letters we obtain EARL.ESSEX, where the letter X is used to match the T. Therefore we identify Laertes With Robert Essex. As for the Characters CLAUDIUS, OPHELIA and GERTRUDIS, we propose to identify them with DUDLEY (Earl Leicester), EARL SOUTH and ELIZABETH TUDOR, respectively. These names can be obtained by swapping letters, as before. As an example we discuss the (maybe contro- versial) matching between OPHELIA and EARL SOUTH: after swapping letters, the P and I of OPHELIA remain unmatched, the same as the letters R,U,T of EARL SOUTH. However, using the greek alphabet p=ρ(rho)=r and u=upsilon=y=i, where the greek i is identified to the latin i. The remaining T can be matched to H=X. Finally we would like to discuss the identification of GUILDENSTERN and ROSENCRANTZ. We believe that both are composite names: Guilden- stern=Gold-stern=scarce-money, and Rosen-crantz=Rose-actors=actors of the Rose(theater) or Rose-crafts=skills of the Rose theater actors. We have found a reason to explain why these characters are killed at the end of the play.

5 About the Chandos Portrait

The so-called ‘Chandos Portrait’, now in the National Portrait Gallery (Lon- don), is one of the few surviving portraits of William Shakespeare. It is believed to be an authentic portrait of him, although not without doubts. We believe this portrait is authentic of Shakespeare because of the two at- tributes shown by the model: ear ring and white collar. By swapping letters, EAR.RING.WHITE.COLLAR becomes WILLIAM.SHAKESPEARE. Once more we have to use the greek alphabet with o=ω=m, p=ρ=r, g=x=any letter=s, k=x=any letter=t. The remaining letter is the n from ‘ring’, that can be matched to h=x or k=x from ‘Shakespeare’.

6 About Shakespeare’s mother

The same as the identity of Shakespeare’s father is to be found in the play ‘Hamlet’, the identity of his mother is to be found in the play ‘The merchant

4 of Venice’. The plot of this play is well known: the Venice jewish moneylen- der Shylock agrees to lend Antonio a few thousand ducats without interest upon the condition that if he is unable to return the money at the specified date, Shylock would be allowed to take a pound of Antonio’s flesh. Mean- while, Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, has fled home to meet Lorenzo. Other details of the plot are unimportant. The first thing we have to realize is that by swapping letters, SHY- LOCK converts into AVUELO, which means ‘grand-father’ in both Spanish and Portuguese. To obtain the matching we use y=u=v, c=k=x=any letter and s=¸c=x (using XVII century spanish spelling). Note also that we use the old spelling AVUELO and not the current one ABUELO, where V has transformed into B. Therefore Shylock is Shakespeare’s grand-father, suggesting that Jessica is the name of his mother, but this is not the case. If we swap letters in the combination JESSICA.LORENZO, we obtain SUZANA.EARL.ESSEX, where the I of JESSICA is matched to U=Y=I of SUZANA and the O of LORENZO to the X of ESSEX. The correct spelling of SUZANA obtained by this method is uncertain, but in any case it seems that Shakespeare’s mother was Susanna in English spelling (Susana in Spanish). We conclude that Shakespeare’s mother and grand-father were jews of Hispanic origin (Portugal or Spain) and that the name of Shakespeare’s mother coincides with the name of his elder daughter. In the same way, the name of his unique son, Hamnet, coincides with the name of his father, Walter.

7 About jews in England at the time of Shake- speare

Many people believe that no jews lived in England at the time of Shake- speare, but this assumption in not correct. It it is true that jews were expulsed from England in 1290. However, some jews coming from Portu- gal settled in 1496 in the south coast of Ireland, and by 1660 a synagogue was founded in Dublin, near Dublin Castle. Any english traveller to Ireland might have encountered jews of hispanic origin. Walter Devereux travelled to Ireland leading military expeditions and therefore could be the father of some illigitimate son with a jewish lady. If this is the case, and this son is William Shakespeare, there should be evidence in the archives of the Devereux family, in the form of payments to John Shakespeare to educate the child, and later to Cambridge University where William studied at least

5 law, medicine, and french language. There might be traces of payments for a travel to Italy as well. We do not claim proof for any of these payments.

8 About the madness of Hamlet

It is interesting to note the following dialog In Act V scene 2 (230): Hamlet: Then Hamlet does it not. Hamlet denies it. Who does it then ? His madness (...) his madness is, etc... Therefore Hamlet-Shakespeare admits here, and in other parts of the play, that he is mad, but what kind od madness ? I think we may know it, since by swapping letters MADNESS.IS converts into MIGRAINE, where we have used g=x=s and d=p=ρ=r. The fact that Shakespeare suffered painful and frequent migraine attacks is not a new hypothesis. Migraine is also mentioned in other plays like ‘Othello’, and all this is well known. I believe however that the play ‘Hamlet’ provides new striking evidence for the migraine hypothesis as an explanation for Hamlet’s madness. Mi- graine symptoms appear for example in the famous monolog ‘to be or not to be’, but this evidence will be discussed elsewhere. We believe however that the migraine explanation fails to provide a full account of Hamlet’s mental disorders. We know from Hamlet’s monologs that he goes through alternating states of depression and euphoria, that he experiences suicidi- cal ideas, and that he suffers migraine attacks. We therefore believe that Hamlet-Shakespeare suffered ‘bipolar disorder of type II’. In this article we have proved that in addition he is cryptomaniatic, reinforcing the bipolar disorder hypothesis, also known as maniac-depressive disorder.

9 Summary and conclusions

We suggest a new line of investigation in the authorship question, namely that William Shakespeare was the illegitimate son of Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex and a Jewish lady called Susanna, of Hispanic origin. This information is obtained by reinterpreting information in the plays ‘Hamlet’ and ‘The merchant of Venice’. We also believe that William Shakespeare is the author of the plays and poems that are commonly attributed to him, and that there is no need to attribute them to a diﬀerent author. We propose to investigate the connections between the Devereux family and Shakespeare, in the form of payments to John Shakespeare, William’s assumed father, and to Cambridge University to some unknown member of the Devereux family during the so-called ‘lost years’. We also advance the hypothesis that

6 Shakespeare suﬀered a maniac-depressive disorder, nowadays called bipolar disorder of type II.

7 Figure 1: Chandos portrait

8 Figure 2: King Hamlet

9 Figure 3: Claudius

10 Figure 4: Polonius

11 Figure 5: Laertes

12 Figure 6: Ophelia