~be ~bake5peare ®xforb Newsletter
Dedicated to Researching and Honoring the True Bard Volume 45: No.2 Published quarterly by the Shakespeare-Oxford Society September 2009 Watertown Symposium
Bill Boyle
he two-day "Shakespeare Boston area since the Oxford Tfrom the Oxfordian Perspec Day Banquet - founded in 1988 tive" symposium held May by Charles Boyle - ceased after 29-30,2009 in Watertown, Mas 2005 due to increasing costs at sachusetts, was a great success. the Harvard Faculty Club. There About 50-60 people - many of had been several small gather them first timers - turned out ings since then - including a for both a play on Friday night joint mini-conference in Con and the all-day symposium in cord last spring with a Concord Watertown Public Library on based group that has reinvigo Saturday. There was coverage in rated the concept of the Concord the local media both before and School of Philosophy - but after the event. no major event with speakers Bonner Miller Cutting and publicity. DiLiddo said she The event was organized by Lori modeled the event on the last DiLiddo of Cambridge, work several Oxford Day banquets ing with Watertown resident that included a Friday evening and longtime Oxfordian Carole dinner followed by speakers and Berney and Shakespeare Fel a panel discussion the next day. lowship President Alex McNeil. The symposium was the first The major venue for Saturday major Oxfordian event in the was a meeting room in the Watertown Public Library • INSIDE· that was large enough to ac commodate audiences of over Posthumous sonnets 100 including room for tables, Mark Anderson - Cossolotto 2 displays, and a catered lunch. Remembering K.C. The room also had a built-in - Whittemore 4 ceiling projector that could be No-body and Some-body hooked up to laptop computers - Prechter 6 for Power Point displays, mov De Vere as Henry IV ies, and other electronic media. - Charlton 11 The room is available to local Ben Jonson - Merkel 15 groups at no cost. In addition Poem - Ray 21 to the library space, the First Apocrypha - Ray 22 Parish of Watertown Unitarian Much Ado review - Hughes 27 Universalist Church was used Soul review - Whalen 28 for a Friday night performance Film update - Eagan-Donovan 30 of Hank Whittemore's Shake Altrocchi/WhiUemore 32 Speare's Treason. Marie Merkel Shahan to Shermer 37 (col1t'd 011 p. 33) Photos courtesy Bill Boyle SOS President Matthew Cossolotto: Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter Published quarterly by the My name be buried riddle wrapped in a mystery Shakespeare Oxford Society - marking the inside an enigma" can aptly p.o. Box 808 400 anniversary be applied to the publication of Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 of Shakespeare's Shakespeare's Sonnets. Tel: (914) 962-1717 posthumously published Fax: (914) 245-9713 sonnets Questions and uncertainties Email: [email protected] fI A booke called Shakespeares abound regarding just about ISSN 1525-6863 Sonnettes" was registered for everything associated with what www.shakespeare-oxford.com publication on May 20, 1609, by is arguably the most famous publisher Thomas Thorpe. That collection of poems in the Eng http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com much we know for sure. It is as lish language, perhaps in any Editor: sumed by most scholars that the language. While I am fascinated Linda Theil book bearing the rather bland by all of the mysteries surround Editorial Board: title Shake-speare's Sonnets was ing the sonnets - including John Hamill published shortly thereafter. such things as the identity of Frank Davis the Fair Youth, the Dark Lady, Dr. Jim Brooks It's fair to say this book, which and the Rival Poet - this column Ramon Jimenez contains 154 sonnets and a will focus on one specific issue: Dr. Richard Smiley short narrative poem titled The hypothesis that this book of
Katherine Chiljan fI A Lover's Complaint," has sonnets was published posthu Brian Bechtold perplexed casual readers and mously in 1609. Layout and Printing expert commentators alike over St. Martin de Porres Lay Dominicans the past four centuries. Winston Progress report New Hope, Kentucky Churchill's famous 1939 descrip I thought members would be
All contents copyright © 2009 tion of the Soviet Union as fI a interested in a quick progress Shakespeare Oxford Society The Newsletter welcomes research (cont'd 011 p. 45) articles, book reviews, letters and news items. Contributions should be reasonably concise and, when appropriate, validated by peer review. Assignment of copyright SOS on Facebook is required for publication. The views of contributors do not necessarily reflect those of the Shakespeare Oxford Society as SOS board member and pub on a regular basis, rather than a literary and educational organization. lications committee member becoming a fan and moving on Board of Trustees Brian Bechtold opened the SOS to the next one." Shakespeare Oxford Society Facebook page on July 23, 2008. He was assisted by Stuart Green Those who are interested in Lifetime HOlloran} Trustee and Julia Bechtold. Julia helped working with Bechtold on ideas Charles Boyle with initial building of the for keeping the 50S Facebook 2009 social networking site and both site interesting and relevant Brian Bechtold helpers suggested items to be to users may contact him at: Matthew Cossolotto (President) included. [email protected]. Stephen Downs Toni Downs flWe are attempting to appeal to Visit the site today at http:// John Hamill (First Vice President) a younger, more Internet-savvy www.facebook.col1t/pages/ Virginia Hyde (Secretary) crowd," Bechtold said. flWe Shakespeare-Oxford-Society/ Richard Joyrich (Membership Secretary) need to keep things happening 96412830317?ref=nf and become Michael Pisapia on the site - news, discussions, a FAN to help spread the word. James (Jaz) Sherwood answering questions - leading Richard Smiley readers to relevant sites, so they Susan Grimes Width (Treasurer) return to the SOS Facebook page 2009 5F150S joint conference
The 2009 joint conference of • RonHess: Did ThomasSackville (plus tax and fees). The hotel the Shakespeare Fellowship influence Shake-speare's Son provides a free shuttle service to and the Shakespeare Oxford nets? the George Bush International Society will be held Novem • Richard Whalen: The Influ Airport. For online hotel reser ber 5-8 at the Houston Inter ence of Commedia dell' Arte in vations: http://doubletree.hiltol1. continental Airport Double Shakespeare com/el1/dt/groups/persol1alized/ tree Hotel in Houston, Texas. • John Hamill: A Spaniard in the HOUAPDT-SHP-2009110S/il1- The cost for full registration Elizabethan Court -- Don An dex.jhtml, or contact Angelica is $200 including presenta tonio Perez at Doubletree: al1gelica.cal1to@ tions, Saturday luncheon • Marty Hyatt: Heaven's Sweetest hilton. co 111, 281-848-4001 or buffet and Sunday luncheon Air 1-800-222-TREE banquet. • Ren Draya: Music in Othello • John Shahan: Declaration of Attendance options: A preliminary list of presenters Reasonable Doubt: Strategy includes: Implications for Oxfordians Full registration: $200 includes • Matthew Cossolotto: Posthu- presentations, Sat. lunch buffet • Frank Davis: The "Bard's" Six mous Sonnet Publication and Sun. luncheon banquet Signatures • Tom Regnier: Law in the Sonnets One Day Registration: Thursday • Alex McNeil: Is "Shakespeare" A registration form is included $35 (Presentations only) in Jeopardy? in this newsletter, mail it in or One Day Registration: Friday • Hank Whittemore: "Shakespea register online for the SF /SOS $60 (Presentations only) re's Treason" annual conference at: One Day Registration: Saturday • Keir Cutler: Teaching Shake http://www.goestores.com/cata $60 (Presentations only) speare and "Is Shakespeare log.aspx?Merchal1t=shakespeare One Day Registration: Sunday Dead" by Mark Twain? oxfordsociety&DeptID=170S79 $35 (Presentations only) • Earl Showerman: Trolius and Saturday Luncheon Buffet: $35 Cressida -- Shakespeare's Ho The Houston Intercontinental Sunday Luncheon Banquet: $35 meric Satire Airport Doubletree Hotel has Special student and teacher rate: • Paul Altrocchi: How to Baste reserved a block of rooms at $15 (For Saturday 1:00 - 6:30 and Barbeque an Upstart Daw a reduced rate of $99 a night p.m. only)
Join the Shakespeare Oxford Society, founded in 1957. Members receive the quarterly Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter and the annual journal, The Oxfordian. Name: ______
Address: ______
City: ______
StateIZip: ______
Name on card: ______
Card #: ______Expiration: ______
Signature: ______
o Regular $50/60 overseas 0 Family $75/85 overseas o Student $30/40 overseas 0 Do not include my name in directory Send this form with a check, VISA, MASTERCARD, or American Express charge to: Shakespeare Oxford SOCiety, P.O. Box 808, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598. Call 914-962-1717 for more information, or check www.shakespeare-oxford.com. Remembering K.C.
Hank Whittemore even before she was born - in 1948, when her mother Nora riends, colleagues and stu Dunfee was acting in Red Peppers Fdents of Katherine Dunfee by Noel Coward. She made her Clarke (K.C) Ligon gathered on Broadway debut at eight in the June 22 in New York to celebrate Dylan Thomas play Under Milk the life of this multi-talented Wood and at eleven appeared and beloved actress, dialect with both parents - her father coach, teacher, writer and leader was actor David Clarke - in the of the modern Oxfordian move national tour of The Visit with ment, who died on March 23 at Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. age sixty after battling a long A member of the first graduating illness. The memorial service class of New York University took place in the heart of the Tish School of the Arts Gradu Broadway theatre district on a ate Acting Program, she built Monday evening - when most an impressive resume of stage stages are dark - at the legend and television credits while also K.c. Ugon (1948-2009) in 1981 ary Circle in the Square, where becoming a professional writer. KC was on the faculty of the Theatre School specializing in speaker after speaker turned KC designed dialects for entire voice, speech and dialects. the occasion into an emotion Broadway productions and charged outpouring of affection for regional theatre companies In a parallel life, KC was deeply mixed with laughter and tears, around the country. As a dialect involved in the effort to establish prompted by anecdotes about consultant she worked with Edward de Vere as Shakespeare. KC as a tough-minded, bluntly scores of extraordinary actors Twenty years ago she won a honest, thoroughly professional such as James Earl Jones, Philip playwriting contest sponsored by teacher and coach with deep Seymour Hoffman and Estelle Ruth Miller (1922-2005), a giant reservoirs of empathy along Parsons. She also worked with of Oxfordian research, and they with humor and insight as well actor Tom Ligon - whom she became close friends. She served as personal style and flair. married in 1976 and who, at the on the Board of Trustees of the memorial, introduced a video Shakespeare Fellowship, was montage of KC in photographs a top contributor to its website that was both funny and deeply discussion forum (logging 4,871 At her memorial . .. speaker after moving. posts since 2002) and wrote speaker turned the occasion into articles for the various Oxford an emotion-charged outpouring Also at the service was KC/s ian publications. Recently she of affection mixed with laughter younger sister, Susan Dunfee; co-authored "The Harvey-Nashe Theodore Mann, co-founder of Quarrel and Love's Labor's Lost" and tears, prompted by anecdotes the Circle in the Square Theatre; with German scholar Robert about K. C. as a tough-minded, actor-director Austin Pendleton; Detobel that is published on Rob bluntly honest, thoroughly and many others who told how ert Brazil's Elizabethan Authors professional teacher and coach KC had "performed miracles" website. She also created three helping hundreds of profes blogs: KC Ligon's Blog: About with deep reselVoirs of empathy sional performers and students Theatrical, Truly Shakespearean along with humor and insight as with phrasings, breath control, Life, Shakespeare and Elizabeth: well as personal style and flair. accents and interpretations of The Myth and the Reality, and their acting roles. Actors and Accents: The Actors' Dialect Workbook. One graduate of her instruc KC was fond of saying she had tions told how KC. transformed
At her memorial, after the been a professional performer a young man who II sounded crowd took seats at one end of most of her life, born to it, not in like a thug" into a polished the Circle's theater-in-the-round, a trunk but appearing on stage professional announcer; another recalled that after KC. became rose to her feet and recalled how written with Ted Story, director. too ill to travel uptown to the KC. had spoken to her often He lives in Nyack, New York, with Theatre School, she summoned about the Earl of Oxford, cit- his wife Glo and their son Jake. everyone down to her apartment ing the evidence for his author Hank also produces a blog (http:// in Greenwich Village and held ship of the Shakespeare works. hankwhittemore. wordpress. com). class there. Tom Ligon described how she was able to help actors "So when I heard she died," the K.c. Ligon's blogs are available on adopt dialects indirectly, that is, woman said, "I imagined her the Web at: by immersing them within their ascending into heaven and look • K.c. Ligon's Blog: About characters' settings until their ing down upon us, with that Theatrical, Truly Shakespearean Life accents and speech patterns sultry smile of hers, and saying, at http://kcligon.typepad.com began to change on their own. 'I was right, wasn't Il"' • Shakespeare and Elizabeth: The Myth and the Reality at http:// By the time it was my turn to Yes, KC., you were right - in kcligon. wordpress. com speak I realized I was open- so many, many ways. • Actors and Accents: The Actors' ing a window on a related yet Dialect Workbook at http://kcligo1t. very different aspect of K. c.' s Hank Whittemore is a former typepad.co11't/acting_accents life - the Oxfordian world. I professional actor and the author • "The Harvey-Nashe Quarrel found myself talking about our of eleven books including The and Love's Labor's Lost" written friendship, our talks on the Monument elucidating the world with German scholar Robert Detobel phone, conversations by email of Shakespeare's sonnets (www. is published on Robert Brazil's and many long, often daily shakespearesmonument.com). Elizabethan Authors website at discussions about various topics He currently pelforms a solo show http://www.elizabethal1autllOrs. surrounding the issue of Shake based on the book, entitled Shake c0111/harveY-l1ashe001.htm. spearean authorship. When I speare's Treason (www. took my seat again a woman shakespearestreasol1.com), co-
TOX update
Dr. Michael Egan, Editor • Playing Dead: An Updated Re • The Life of Timon of Athens: The Oxfordian view of the Case for Christopher Shakespeare's Sophoclean Tragedy, Marlowe by Peter Farey by Earl Showerman The next issue of the Shake • Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare, • Masters of Mischaracterization: speare-Oxford Society annual by David Kathman Elliott & Valenza and the Cla journal, The Oxfordian, Vol. XI • The Case for Oxford Revisit remont Shakespeare Authorship 2008, is in active preparation ed by Ramon Jimenez Clinic by John M. Shahan and and will be available in fall, Richard F. Whalen 2009. The line-up of contributors The rest comprises a series of reflects the editor's emphasis high-level academic papers related Among other goodies in the on the authorship question as to matters of attribution, author issue readers will find a response opposed to the question of au ship and the question of who to the Open Forum authors by thorship. A special Open Forum Shakespeare was. Articles include: Stephanie Hughes, and an ex contains four provocative essays tended letter to the editor on the. about some of the newest con • Shakespeare, Oxford and the Gram Sonnets by Matthew Cossolloto tenders, plus an update of the mar School Question by Robin case for Oxford. Fox The Oxfordian is a benefit of • Greene's Groats-worth of membership in the Shakespeare Open Forum: Witte: Shakespere's Biography? Oxford Society. See the insert on by Frank Davis this page for information about • Amelia Bassano Lanier: A New • Slurs,NasaIRhymesandAmputa becoming a member online or Paradigm by John Hudson tions: Manipulating Evidence in by mail. • The Case for Derby as Shake the Case of 'Woodstock' by Mi speare by John Raithel chael Egan Somebody We Know Is behind No-body and Some-body
NO-BODY, denaturing-an early modern Roberl Prechter AND SOME·BODY· visual and verbal Verfremdung Vrabth~tfucCbronideHiJlOfkofEl1dttr¢, n 1878, Chatto and Windus ",u"ilPfotUJJt!jII:rl'ljnm!Jf=tl seffekt, at once philosophical and v""''''t1txsW published The School of 7Uhlt(C.JI1'kntf,#;fiJM&Nt~ufJtJhIU clownish. His negativity, which I ~Ji:itjiitlrquw. Shakspere, a two-volume col is articulated in dialogue with lection of seven anonymous the companion figure of "Some Elizabethan and Jabobean plays body", is matched in King LeaJ~ edited by the recently-deceased above all in the role of Edgar .. Richard Simpson, a prominent ."(Womack 195) Shakespeare scholar. They had all been performed by Lacking, however, are the the Shakespeare's company during matic depth and the high level his connection with it, or were of poetic quality that King Lear assigned to him by tradition, evinces. and were not to be found in Source: John S. Farmer "Nobody and Somebody", 1911, reproduced in The the customary collections of Tudor Facsimile Texts
She reports, /I Nobody and Some on financial markets, including the and King Lear." New Theatre Quar body is one of the very few New York Times bestsellel~ Conquer terly 23:3. August 2007: Abstract. non-Shakespeare-a ttri bu ted the Crash (John Wiley, 2002). works that are found to have He is president of Elliott Wave Note: The text of this play is also significant clusters, both in International and Executive Director available on Robert Brazil's number and content." (Flues of the Socionomics Institute. He Elizabethan Authors website at: 2 19) Echoing a common ob presented a new theory offinance in
Derran Charlton Some say good Will (which I, in sport, do sing) n 1993 I presented a talk Had'st thou not plaid some Iat the Shakespeare Oxford Kingly parts in sport, Society Conference in Boston Thou had'st bin a companion that included brief references for a King: to a portrait by an unknown And become a King among the artist. I claimed the painting meaner sort. depicted Edward deVere in Some others raile; but mile as the role of King Henry IV they thinke fit, (Figure 1). Older members Thou hast not myling, but a of the audience dismissed raining Wit: my claim without further And honesty thou sow'st, discussion, asserting that the which they do reape; painting was a well-known So to increase their Stocke portrait of Henry IV Oth- which they do keepe. ers such as Roger Parisious and keynote speaker Norrie The last two lines of the Figure 1. English portrait, possibly of an English Epstein were fascinated gentleman, unknown artist, in unknown hands epigram very frankly state and more receptive to the that others claim uShake idea of Oxford as an actor. speare's" work as their own. Subsequently, Professor Uwe that de Vere may have played Davies also wrote in his Mi-
Laugwitz and Robert Detobel Henry IV Davies' uThe Epigram crocosmos (1603), U And though kindly published a copy of this on Shake-speare" (number 159) the stage doth staine pure portrait in the second issue of appeared in The Scourge of Folly gentle-bloud." Davies' reference
the German Neues Shakespeare titled as uTo our English Terence to U pure gentle-bloud" probably Journal (1998), describing it as Mr. Will. Shake-speare": indicates that he had an aristo
U an anonymous Elizabethan crat in mind; perhaps someone gentleman in the role of King like de Vere. In a similar vein, Henry IV" he wrote in Speculum Proditorri (first published following his I put my thoughts of the por death) these verses: trait to one side until earlier this year when I was reminded I knew a Man, unworthy as I of my presentation by the am, issue of a current English And yet too worthie for a coun postage stamp depicting King telfeit Henry IV (Figure 2). I instantly Made once a King; who though realized the remarkable differ it were in game, ence in the color of the king's Yet was it there where Lords tunic in comparison with the and Ladyes met; Oxford-blue tunic worn by the Who honor'd him as hee had
U anonymous English Eliza bene the same, bethan Gentleman" whom I And no subiectiue duties did had suggested was actually forget; Edward de Vere. When to him-selfe he smil'd, and said, 10 here A remarkable epigram - one I haue for noght, what Kings Stratfordians rarely refer to doe buy so deere . .. - by John Davies of Hereford (c. 1565-1618), published six Figure 2. Portrait of Henry IV on English postage The reference uI knew a Man, years after the death of Oxford stamp, probably based on the portrait by an unknown unworthy as I amu was written in 1610, evokes the possibility artist (late 16th century), National Portrait Gallery in the past-tense following the (De Vere COllt.) colored tunic, chain of office, death of Oxford. Davies, in his elongated reddish mustache humility, appears to be signify and small beard, straight nose, ing his shadowed respect. blue-grey eyes, normal-sized earlobe, and the rounded but Despite the myths and tons on the tunic. There are 23 Stratford ian traditions, there extant portraits or engravings is no evidence that William of Henry IV - according to Shakspere of Stratford the British National Portrait upon-Avon had ever acted Gallery - and though none in any play by Shakespeare. were produced in his lifetime, The supposed hard evidence several were either painted or on behalf of William Shak engraved during the Elizabe spere was fictional; other than age. Others were com claimed evidence was a total pleted during the seventeenth blank. Davies must have been and eighteenth centuries. referring to someone else. A larger, more detailed por That John Davies of Her- trait of King Henry IV (Figure eford might have known of 3) depicts the name Henricus deVere's stage activities is nn. Son of John of Gaunt, suggested by his associa- Figure 3. Henry IV (1367-1413), 1550-1650, British First Duke of Lancaster, and School- possibly Sixteenth Century, Royal Collec tions. Though he primarily tion, Sf. James Palace the grandson of King Ed wrote about metaphysical ward III, Henry was born in and religious topics, Davies first Baron Herbert of Cherbury. 1367 and gained the crown by was also a writing master, a The contacts of John Davies of usurpation in 1399. He was the person who taught penman Hereford were considerable and first Lancastrian King and the ship. In that capacity his pupils most influential. War of the Roses had begun. included members of the earls In this portrait Henry displays of Pembroke, Derby, and the The portrait of King Henry IV in his right hand a symbolic Herbert, Percy and Egerton that is depicted on a current Tudor Rose. In his left, he holds households. In 1605 Davies was English postage stamp is prob a mace, the symbol of his au appointed Master of Penman ably a portrait of one of the thority. Remarkably, the Earl ship to Prince Henry when the kings to which Davies referred. of Oxford's family was Lancas prince attended Magdalene Of particular note are the cream- trian, and their sympathies were College. Moreover, Davies' clearly with that version of literary patrons were the Henry IV history. Another illustration, family and close associates of Kjng ofEngland; Lord ofIreland (more .. .) a named engraving of Henry Edward deVere, Seventeenth IV, as depicted in Cassell's Earl of Oxford. Almost half History of England, shows of his works were dedicated Henry wearing a ring on the to: Mary Sidney Herbert, little finger of his right hand Dowager Countess of Pem (Figure 4). broke, Oxford's long-time friend and the mother-in- These portraits may be com law of his daughter Susan; pared to those of Oxford. William Herbert, Earl of The well-known Welbeck Pembroke, and one of the portrait, itself a copy painted First Folio's "Incomparable in 1575, shows de Vere at age Bretheren"; Philip Herbert, 25 (Figure 5). Note the hazel Earl of Montgomery, husband colored eyes, the Roman nose, of Susan Vere; Lady Alice Henry IV depicted in Cassell's "History ofEngland" the enlarged earlobe, and the Stanley, Dowager Countess of small reddish mustache. As Derby, widow of Ferdinando Figure 4. Henry IV depicted in Cassell's History of another example, the undated Stanley; and Edward Herbert, England, 1903 supposed portrait depicted on mace, ring on the third finger of the left hand, the button on the head dress, and the curvature of the head gear where the mace intersects it. In addition, close examina tion and comparison of the Bone drawing with the authentic portrait of Henry IV reveals numerous variations and reinforces my belief that Figure 1 is, in fact, a previously unrecognized portrait of Edward de Vere dressed for a possible perfor mance of Henry IV. Figure 5. Edward de Vere, 1575, unknown artist, from a lost original, currently held in National Portrait The portrait of the Gallery, Welbeck Abbey unidentified English the cover of Katherine Chiljan's gentleman in Figure 1 dis Figure 6. The Chiljan portrait of Oxford, English fine edition of Letters and Poems plays some peculiar char School, 1581 of Edward, Earl of Oxford, has acteristics as well as some been fully accepted as being similarities with the Oxford appear to have been deliber authentic by Oxfordians in portraits and differences with ately blackened with the same England and mainland Europe the known portrait (Figure 3). It paint. On closer examination, (Figure 6), (Note 1). This one features a clumsy and apparent the mustache and small beard shows reddish hair and mus ly unnecessary overpainting in had originally been reddish tache, a Roman nose, a large black at the base of the portrait. in color. Note the clear hazel earlobe, and a fine hand with The mustache and small beard colored eyes, enlarged earlobe, elongated fingers. and Roman nose that are like the Welbeck portrait of Oxford A "pencil drawing squared in and the cover illustration of ink" (Figure 7) by Henry Bone, the book of Oxford's poems. after an unknown artist, drawn in Inspect the medallion on the 1814 was acquired by Sir George tunic depicting the single lion Scharf in 1890 and is now part rampant and the gold chain of the National Portrait Gallery that is different than the chain collection. When enlarged, the in the acknowledged portrait of sitter can be seen to be wearing a Henry IV (Note 3). The rounded ring on the third finger of his left buttons on the tunic worn by hand and no rings on his right, King Henry IV are square in contrast to the Cassel engrav shaped in the anonymous por ing (Figure 4). A similar stippled trait. The head of the mace is in engraving by Charles Knight, a totally different pattern, also. after Sylvester Harding, dated Finally, note that the subject of 1792, is also held by the National the anonymous portrait wears a Portrait Gallery (Note 2). The ring on his third finger, not on portrait I had long ago suggested his little finger as in the Cassell was of Edward de Vere (Figure 1) Figure 7. King Henry IV, by Henry Bone, engraving. is similar to Henry Bone's engrav after unknown artist, pencil drawing ing. The similarities include the squared in ink for transfer, March 1814, In conclusion, why does the sleeve of the tunic, the head of the National Portrait Gallery anonymous portrait of Henry (De Vere COllt.) He after liv'd; they, with or for Notes IV vary so much from the theirs, die. 1. See Katherine Chiljan's articles in authentic portraits of him, and He had a tast of raigne, with the Winter 1997, Summer 1998, and yet so resemble Edward de power to leauve; Winter 2003 issues of the Shakespeare Vere? Essentially what could be They cannot tast, but life must Oxford Newsletter. mistaken as a portrait of Henry take or give, 2. Sylvester Harding's depiction turns IV now clearly appears to be Kings for the treasons to them out to be not an oil painting but a a portrait depicting Edward offered small watercolor and is now held by de Vere dressed in the role of Must offer them that offer it, the Folger Shakespeare Library. King Henry IV. It is plausible whereby 3. The rampant lions is featured on two that Oxford, having most prob The body still may hold up hie different portions of Oxford's coat ably written the plays Henry IV the head, of arms (see illustration at Robert (Part One and Part Two) circa Lest otherwise they both too Sean Brazil's site at http://www. 1583 when he was aged 33, low might lye; eli z a beth all a 11th ors. com/eup Jill es performed the actor's role of Yet by this meanes, blood, oft, ellglalld-Ol.htm ). Other noble King Henry IV possibly for the with hate, is shed, families of the period also display entertainment of the court. This Ifbloud so shed, do fall or rampant lions on their coats of arms, explains why John Davies of much, or hie; however. Hereford said in "The Scourge But he without bloud did he of Folly" published in 1610: behead his foes, Derran Charlton has been "Had'st thou not plaid some So made him friends, indeed, or an honorary member of the Kingly parts in sport, Thou foes in showes. De Vere Society since 1989. had'st bin a companion for a He sate in state, that mirth, and He is described as being an King." love did stay; indefatigable Oxfordian They sit in state that hate oft researcher having endlessly Speculum Proditorri undermines; researched primary records by John Davies of Hereford, He, without feare, had some to at the British Library, the dedicated to the third take assay; Bodleian, Oxford; the colleges Earl of Pembrooke But they have such, for feare of at Cambridge University; I knew a Man, unworthy as I sodaine fines; Lambeth Palace; numerous am, He poison'd some (to playas Records Offices; the Folger Library; And yet too worthie for a coun kings might play) Huntington; Harvard; amongst terfeit But twas with Suger and per household collections and private Made once a King, who though fumed wines; archives including Wentworth it were in game, He went with guards, yet stab Woodhouse, Oxboro Hall and Yet was it there where Lords bing feared not: others for more than twenty years. and Ladyes met; They go with guards, yet feare He has given presentations at Who honor'd him, as hee had the stab or shot. The Globe; Castle Hedingham bene the same, He would devise with Ladies, if Historical Society; Montacute And no subjective duties did he could House; Concordia University, forget; Devise with Ladies, without all and at various meetings and When to him-seife he smil'd, suspect; conventions in England, Canada, and said, 10 here If they do so, they do not as and the USA. He has compiled more I have for noght, what Kings they should, than 320 files of Research Notes doe buy so deere. For 'twill be sayd their honors and Oxfordian correspondence, No odds there was in shew (and they neglect; being a regular contributor to the but in show, He could command, and have SOSjDVS newsletters and various Kings are too often honour'd) all as he would; European publications. The late save that he But their commands of have not Charlton Ogburn wrote that he Was but twelve gamesome daies that effect. was"astounded and flabbergasted to king it so; Then who had better Raigns, by Derran's Oxfordian endeavors, And kings, more yea res of judge all of sense, researches, and findings". soveraigne misery, Either a king indeed, or in He may be reached at: His raigne was short and sweet, pretence. [email protected]. theirs long in 700, Ben Jonson & The Tempest: "The Copie may be Mistaken for the Principall"
Marie Merkel
eanwhile, we make it clear to Bartholomew Fair, there's an Mthat we do not rest upon these awful lot of unexplained heads earlier date theories, and that the mixing with other men's heels rejection of "The Tempest" must in going on between 1609 and our view be incorporated ultimately 1614. into the general argument. J.T. Loo ney, Shakespeare Identified, 1920 In 2001, when I began profiling the elusive sources and other J. T. Looney was quite the opti intellectual and prosodic oddi mist. He confidently left the job ties of The Tempest, Ben Jonson's of collating The Tempest's many name swiftly rose to the top of a curious anomalies, and the very short list of poets capable search for an alternate author of crafting drama of this caliber. who fit the resultant profile, to Last May at the "Symposium: his followers. Since scholars and Shakespeare from the Oxfordian critics routinely acknowledge Ben Jonson (1573-1637), engraved by Perspective" in Watertown, Mas The Tempest's unique departures George Venue (1684-1756), 1730 (engrav sachusetts, I presented a paper from what Shakespeare had ac ing), Honthorst, Gerrit van (1590-1656) entitled "Raising the Dead: Ben complished in the past, there's a Jonson & The Tempest." My focus secure foundation of difference would be bad news indeed. was not on what makes The for us to build upon. Yet most Stratfordians simply cannot af Tempest non-Shakespearean, or Oxfordians remain as enchanted ford to reject The Tempest, much non-Oxfordian, but on the many by The Tempest as their Stratford less hand one four-beat couplet unexplained or overlooked ian counterparts, who regard of it over to Ben. Jonsonian elements in the play. the play, often with sentimental Along with a brief outline of my awe, as the Bard's final solo Oxfordians, on the other hand, case for Jonson as author of The work. do not need The Tempest to Tempest, I invited the audience secure their case. "Spell-stopt" to entertain this controversial As long as we agree to sequester by its charms, however, they idea, even if they were sure they The Tempest from authorship have yet to take full advantage disagreed, simply to see what interrogation, Stratfordians of The Tempest's strange parody questions might come up. I retain their silver bullet against of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist hope that my readers will do the the earl of Oxford, whose death of 1610 (Lucking; Murphy same. in 1604 made it impossible for 5-8; Sokol 196-98) or the even him to write a Jacobean play stranger parody of The Tempest The argument intricately bound to other works found in Jonson's Bartholomew Sometime between 1609 and written between 1609 and 1614. Fair of 1614 (Burnett, chs. 5 & 1611, Ben Jonson (1572-1637) Stratfordians have wisely con 6). The Tempest's insistent echoes knowingly forged a new Shake centrated on the play's apparent of Jonson's masques, such as spearean play. By linking The connection to Strachey's account Hymenaei of 1606 or his 1609 Tempest to events and dramatic of the 1609 shipwreck of the Masque of Queens also await Ox productions current in 1609-14, Sea-Venture. Why is this wise? fordian researchers. Overlooked Jonson helped to maintain the Because more often than not, up to now: the presence of at brand name of William Shake the play's other Jacobean ele least 37 words, proper names speare (1564-1616) and direct ments revolve around the work like Prospero and Stephano, attention away from Edward of Ben Jonson, the man upon and a dozen or more phrases Oxenford (1550-1604) as author whose word the Stratford ian that Shakespeare never used, of the works. By recycling situa Monument rests. Proof that he appear in The Tempest and in tions and characters or humours tampered with any part of their Ben Jonson's works. As Jonson from his earlier plays, and by ace-in-the-hole against Oxford slyly insinuated in the induction employing a wide range of his (Bell lollllsoll COIlt.) who dares to desire his master's Aside from personal grievances, own dramatic preferences, Ben daughter. "Popular tradition Jonson was also the most promi Jonson left an indelible signa held tha t the queen kenneled nent member of the Pembroke ture on his forgery. her royal hounds on the Isle literary coterie, a circle whose of Dogs," (Riggs 32) a location base of reference was the mar What follows are Jonson's that resurfaces in Eastward Ho, tyred hero and poet, Sir Philip possible motive, means and op Jonson's second provocative Sidney, "who had been one of portunity for perpetrating this collaboration (with Marston Jonson's earliest formative influ hoax and five dramatic elements and Chapman, in 1605) packed ences." (Miles 88) Sir Philip's of The Tempest where we might with mockery of Shakespeare's brother, Robert, along with discern Jonson's hand. wor k and Oxford's financial Robert's three children (includ distress. Echoes of these plays, ing the poet Mary, wife of Sir Motive and of Poetaster and Satiromastix Robert Wroth) as well as Wil Why would Ben Jonson want reverberate throughout The liam Herbert - son of Sidney's to maintain the brand name of Tempest, accounting for several sister Mary, Countess of Pem William Shakespeare and direct of the unique words and phrases broke - all offered Jonson some attention away from Edward shared with Jonson (such as form of patronage or hospitality, Oxenford as author of works? "invisible to every eye" and which he reciprocated by im "care of thee" from The Case is mortalizing them in his poems. There is clear evidence of bad Altered; "zenith" and "in case" blood between Shakespeare from Poetaster.) Oxfordians will not need an and Jonson during the time itemization of the many ways of the so-called poetomachia or "What's past is prologue," in which we know that Lord Poet Wars of 1597-1602 as an The Tempest's villain, Antonio, Oxford and Sir Philip were not unbiased examination of the helpfully informs us (2 .2.249). the best of friends. Oxford's literary evidence - especially in How far back should we look mockery of Philip in his plays Jonson's Poetaster and Dekker's for that past? "Twelve year - long after the knight's tragic Satiromastix - will confirm. If since, Miranda, twelve year death from a battle wound in Shakespeare is Oxford, how since," Prospero insists to his 1586 - probably made him does this change the topical daughter (1.2.53). For the audi more enemies than Oxfordians narrative in these plays? In ence at the play's first recorded have been willing to acknowl 1597 Jonson's collaboration performance of 1611, counting edge. In 1616, Ben Jonson, the with Nashe on The Isle of Dogs backward would lead them most linguistically potent of landed him in prison where directly into the dark abysm of these overlooked foes, risked Elizabeth's infamous torturer, the Poetomachia. This inglori public scorn to publish the first Richard Topcliffe, questioned ous war of words ended when collected works of any English him. The scandal also elimi Shakespeare, along with the playwright. By 1623, he was nated one of The Globe's major poetasters Marston and Dekker, London's premier literary competitors, The Swan. Since publicly administered a humili authority. Oxford (as Master Apis Lapis) ating purge to Jonson, one that appears to have been Nashe's made him "bewray his credit" As a great poet himself, Jonson patron, we need to re-assess (Parnassus 138). For Benjamin knew the greatness in his rival's the earl's stance towards Nashe the Bricklayer - whose name, works. He may have been the and Jonson, their risque com like Prospero's, means fortu major force behind collecting edy, and their association with nate (Miles 6; Vaughan 23) - a and preserving the earl's liter The Swan and Pembroke's Men chance to even the score with ary remains; no one else would at this disruptive juncture. the seventeenth earl of Oxford have known so well their true would be well worth the wait of worth. Forging a play, however, At the end of Act IV, Prospero twice twelve years. When Pros that helped to disconnect the unleashes his hellhounds on pero brags about his "potent earl of Oxford's callous wit from Caliban; in the seventh scene of Art," we may want to keep in Shakespeare's name may have Act IV in Jonson's The Case is mind Jonson's famous declara been the right thing to do in Altered, Jacques de Prie unleash tion that "Shakespeare wanted Jonson's eyes - a gift to both his es his mastiff on Peter Onion Arte." (Drummond 4) patrons and to future readers. - another back-talking servant
16 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter Vol. 45, No.2 Jonson also had a reputation In essence Jonson describes ners to the group project. Jonson for being a practical joker. As a literary cannibal: one who participated in several of these his host in Scotland, Sir William feeds on the body of another's - most notably, Eastward Ho, Drummond remarked, Ben was work, thus transforming the Barton's second example of style "given rather to lose a friend original genius into something subdued to the work. For all we than a jest." (Drummond 27) I uniquely his own. This public know, there may be undetected think he did it simply to prove confession of his own digestive additions by Jonson within that he could. His own comedies practices may go some way Shakespeare's plays - espe did not always please, and in towards explaining why Ben's cially in the late romances 1611 his ambitious play Catiline contemporaries referred to him - since" even the computer flopped. The common sort pre in Satiromastix, published in finds it difficult now to distin ferred sweet Shakespeare who'd 1602, as an anthropophagite. guish Jonson's hand from that given them bad-boy rogues like of Chapman, or Marston, in Falstaff to idolize and laugh at. We know that Jonson was suf Eastward Ho." (Barton 17) Disgusted by their ignorance, ficiently proficient at imitation to Jonson forged a Shakespearean earn a living with this art, Jonson also indulged in the fantasy guaranteed to thrill since on September 5, 1601, he "verse form called the recusatio these die-hard fans, and King received a generous payment (refusal). A recusatio evokes the James to boot. But he forged it from Henslowe for additions style and content of a poem the from his own metal, and pur to Thomas Kyd's The Spanish author refuses to write." (Riggs posely left his fingerprints all Tragedy (Miles 65). This journey 77) As David Riggs observes: over the crime scene. work required that, "to some extent, his nature would have to This paradoxical combination of Means subdue itself to what it worked disclaimer and imitation crops up How did Ben Jonson go about in, like the dyer's hand." (Barton repeatedly in Poetaster. Jonson forging a play that most scholars 15) The play was well known to disavows Ovid, yet he retells the and critics regard as an authen London audiences by this time, story of Ovid and Julia in the tic Shakespearean triumph? and Ned Alleyn - the famous lovers' own words . ... In the last actor who played a principal act, he brings Virgil on stage, Jonson was a poetic genius role in the work - "could not has him recite forty-two lines of who, "like most Elizabethan have welcomed an Hieronimo the Aeneid in Ben Jonson's new schoolboys," learned his trade who seemed to be two different English translation, and then through devoted imi tation of his people, speaking in two radically abruptly halts the recital. (78) chosen masters (Barton 16). In opposed styles." (Barton 16) his Timber: or Discoveries made Riggs concludes his discussion upon Men and Matter, he gives To this day, scholars have with this subversive recognition: us his modus operandi for forging trou ble finding Jonson's sty Ie in liThe whole performance is a literary masters: these additions, yet Barton gives staged recusatio. Jonson hints two persuasive examples of Jon that he could write in the style The third requisite in our Poet, son caught in the" act of ventril of Ovid, or Shakespeare, or or Maker, is Imitation, to bee oquism." (17) First, there are the Virgil, if he felt inclined to do so; able to convert the substance, or "four elegies in The Underwood but he does not." (78) (emphasis Riches of an other Poet, to his (XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL, XU) (that) mine) In other words, there's owne use. To make choise of one have for long been a subject of nothing in the highly Romantic, excellent man above the rest, and critical dispute, precisely be Ovid-and-Virgil-infused Tem so to follow him, till he grow cause the voice speaking sounds pest beyond the range of Ben vert) Hee: or, so like him, as so like Donne's." Three of these, Jonson's "potentArt" . the Copie may be mistaken says Barton, " ... are credibly the for the Principall. Not, as a work of a Jonson choosing for Opportunity Creature, that swallowes, what it the moment to pay his friend the How was Ben Jonson in the takes in, crude, raw, orindigested; compliment of judicious imita right place at the right time to but, thatfeedes with an Appetite, tion." (17) pull off his extraordinary hoax? and hath a Stomacke to concoct, devide, and turne all into nour Collaborations also asked the Jonson was at the height of his ishment (Jonson 93). playwright to conform his man- poetic art at the time of the first (Bell Johllsoll COllt.) • In his own 1616 Folio, Jonson owes more to Jonson's example recorded performance of The dedicated his Epigrams - a col- than to Shakespeare's habits of Tempest in 1611. He had access lection he referred to three times composition." (Riggs 276) to the many possible sources of within the first page-and-a-half As David Riggs observes, "the The Tempest, including news that as" my book" , echoing Prospero men who prepared the folio for reached London in 1610 that all - to his patron, William Her- the press (and Jonson may well had survived the wreck of the bert, earl of Pembroke, one of have been one of them) remade Sea-Venture. the" incomparable brethren" to Shakespeare in Jonson's image." whom Shakespeare's Folio was (276) With these close ties and Like Shakespeare, Jonson dedicated. working relationships, Jonson wouldn't have needed this • Jonson contributed two prefa- was thus in a position to offer news to write of shipwrecks tory poems of surpassing am- the playas genuine Shakespeare and miraculous survivals, or to biguity to the project, poems with or without the connivance infuse a flavor of New World which helped to secure William of others, who may not have adventures into his play. Wil- Shakespeare of Stratford on been capable of judging its liam Strachey - the survivor Avon as author. authenticity. who wrote the letter that seems • As George Greenwood deftly most echoed in the play - was, summarized in 1921, the two Five Jonsonian elements in however, Jonson's friend. In letters in the Folio signed by The Tempest: 1605 he contributed a prefatory Heminges and Condell- both Though there are many more, sonnet to Jonson's play, Seja- of whom acted in many of these five categories should nus. As time has proven, select Jonson's plays - bear a suspi- provide a starting place for details from his friend's account dous resemblance to Jonson's codifying "the substance, or of the 1609 Bermuda tempest, prose style. Riches" of The Tempest. Which, seemingly interwoven with the • Ralph Crane, the scrivener who if any, of the ingredients in its text of The Tempest, would move prepared some texts of the First magic must be unadulterated Jonson's literary forgery beyond Folio, worked with Jonson in Shakespeare? Which appear to the reach of Edward de Vere, the years before 1623. Jonson's be Shakespeare-as-digested-by- the seventeenth earl of Oxford, editorial preferences show up in Ben Jonson? Which are actually should posterity ever find him Crane's work as well as in The anti-Shakespearean, and/ or behind Shakespeare's mask. "He Tempest, a play that stands out original to Jonson? There are no died too soon!" may have been from all the other Folio texts for proofs in these brief glimpses, precisely what Ben Jonson had its accuracy and careful prepa- only suggestions for research hoped we would say. ration. "By comparing Jonson's projects designed to re-evaluate, holograph of The Masque of from a Jonsonian point of view, How do we know that Shake- Queens (1609) with Crane's earl i- the forged Shakespearean es- speare wrote The Tempest? The est known transcript, Jonson's sence of The Tempest. two records of performance at Pleasure Reconcild to Virtue court (1611 and 1613) do not - presumably made under the Character list the names of authors, and supervisionofJonson, who may Exhibit A in the case for Jonson before its first appearance in well have" trained" him - How- as master-forger of The Tempest print in 1623, no one anywhere ard-Hill finds a great many of should be his 1598 hit, Every ever referred to The Tempest as Jonson's practices to have their Man in His Humour, where we by Shakespeare. We have only counterparts in Crane's later find the author's first Prospero the dubious word of the First transcripts." (McAvoy 80) and his first Stephano, along Folio collectors for its authentic- • "The scribes who prepared the with Jonson's other perennial ity. Jonson's proximity to this copy for the Shakespeare folio humours in their youthful garb. publication venture would have abandoned the "light pointing" In The Tempest, we see the same given him the chance to slip or "playhouse punctuation" of themes and humours distilled his piece of faux-Shakespeare the Shakespeare quartos and ad- in hindsight and tempered by into the line-up of "Comedies, opted the so-called logical point- maturity when revisited by Histories and Tragedies". The ing that Jonson had employed Jonson twelve years later, per- evidence of his active role in the in his Works. The extensive use haps concurrent with work on First Folio project is circumstan- of parentheses, semicolons, and The Alchemist in 1610, or shortly tial but compelling: end-stopped lines in the 1623 folio thereafter. (Fig. 1) Figure 1 1598 Every Man in his Humour 1610-1611 The Tempest • Musco (Italian for "the fly"), a servant Ariel, "an ayrie Spirit" and servant • Cob, part fish/cannibal Caliban, part fish/cannibal • Cob, the water-bearer Caliban, the log-bearer • Lorenzo Jr. + Hesperida =true love Ferdinand + Miranda =true love • Stephano, a frippery-loving gull Trinculo, a frippery-loving gull • Bobadil, a drunken braggart Stephano, a drunken braggart • Clement, an honorable wise man Gonzalo, an honorable wise man • Lorenzo Sr., doting father Prospero, doting father • Lorenzo Sr., paragon of reason Prospero, paragon of reason • Antonio, privileged dark wit Prospero, privileged light wit
As Oxfordian scholar Chuck found in Jonson, that an audi Shakespeare's Euphuism. A Berney pointed out in the ques ence may have localized as systematic comparison of The tion and answer session after my peculiar to him: roarers, furze, Tempest's prosody and rhetoric Watertown talk, a comparison zenith, correspondent, imposter, wi th Jonson's choices may of Shakespeare's witty clowns support this impression. with The Tempest's buffoons or his several beloved or honorable Jonas A. Barish compares the characters named Antonio with The Tempest sounds very much two playwrights thus: "Shake Pro spero' s villainous brother of as if Shakespeare, in his dotage, speare belongs, on the whole, the same name, would be a rich had lost his bearings and fallen to the older school of rhetorical vein of inquiry. ornament, Jonson to the new under the rugged charm of Ben school of anti-rhetorical natu Vocabulary and usage Jonson's oppositional style. ralness. Shakespeare uses a "Insisting that individuals are syntax derived from Lyly, in best identified through speech, which artful symmetry plays Jonson writes in Discoveries a cardinal role. In Jonson, that "Language most shows the fens, marmazet, totters, asper syntactic effects are equally man; speak that I may see thee". sion, corolary, Barley, frippery, studied, but with a different We derive our most personal mushrumps and chesse. Some purpose: to dislocate symmetry thoughts from public language, unique phrases that are found and thus create the illusion of but inflections of style iden- nowhere else in Shakespeare the absence of rhetoric." (Bar tify poets as the creators of the but do appear in quintessential ish 2) The Tempest sounds very words they use." (Bednarz 28) Jonsonian passages such as: much as if Shakespeare, in his The 37 words and a dozen or "use your authority" (Tudeau dotage, had lost his bearings more phrases I've found thus Clayton 40). Others that I and fallen under the rugged far in The Tempest that appear discovered are: Liberall Artes, in charm of Ben Jonson's opposi nowhere else in Shakespeare's case, expect it, barns and garners, tional style. canon, but do appear in Jonson's and My Bird. works, provide intriguing Classical structure glimpses into the inter-textual Prosody and rhetoric Two aspects of The Tempest's dependence of The Tempest on an To my ear, The Tempest's structure betray a clear Jonso intimate knowledge of Jonson's "rough magic" - aggres- nian influence: its ostentatious published opinions and custom sive enjambment, "weak" or use of the unities of time, space ary usages. double-endings, syntactic and action, and its experimen inversions, and an austere tal use of the" four-part struc A few examples of words use of figures - suggests Ben ture ... invented by Terence unique to The Tempest but Jonson's manly defiance of ... , revived by Machiavelli ... (Bell Johllson COllt.) of the play. Under King James, ously, it seems an inaugural and naturalized on the English Janson became a master of work." (673) stage by Ben Jonson." (Bough these hybrid entertainments, ner 10) and scholars routinely turn to Yet once you begin looking at his work to explain phrases the playas Ben Jonson's forgery Boughner's essay, "Jonsonian and stage directions associated - an error he personally con Structure in The Tempest" gives with the masque-like spectacles firmed in the First Folio - you'll a compelling description of in The Tempest, such as these find premonitions of The Tempest The Tempest's dependence on phrases taken from the First throughout his collected works, Jonson's neo-classical dra Folio edition: as well as in the one play he matic import: "Before him as chose not to preserve, The Case he contemplated the disposi • confused noyse is Altered. As late as 1629, in The tion of the material of The • Soiemne and strange Musicke New Inn or The Magnetic Lady of Tempest . .. Shakespeare found • Weake Masters 1631, he was still playing and re an unembarrassing richness • Hymen's Lamps playing The Tempest soundtrack of theory and application." • Peacocks flye amaine in his mind. (6) Charting the clearly dated • Prosper 011 the top progression of Jonson's experi • the Great Globe If Ben Jonson had included The ments with this structure may Tempest in his own Folio of 1616 give us an unexpected new Studies by Gary Schmidgall in - rather than in Mr. William piece of dating evidence for Shakespeare and the Courtly Aes Shakespeare's Folio of 1623 - I The Tempest. thetic, 1981 and John G. Demary believe that discerning scholars in Shakespeare and the Spectacle after Looney would have seen As for the unities, The Tempest is of Strangeness: The Tempest and the play for what it is: a brilliant the first play with Shakespeare's the Transformation of Renaissance pastiche and critique of Edward name on it to bother with them Theatrical Forms, 1998, docu Oxenford's life and work. since his very early Comedy of ment The Tempest's many echoes Through his choice of sources, Errors. Jonson, however, aggres of Jonson's masques. Regard employment of his own dramat sively called attention to his less of how Shakespeare used ic innovations, and by internal rival's failure to heed the unities masques in plays printed before references within his published in his 1616 prologue to the re 1604, the unique experiments works, Ben Jonson anchored vised Every Man in His Humour. in The Tempest show a writer The Tempest in the Jacobean He obviously relished the chal acutely aware of Ben Jonson's Jonsonian literary milieu of 1609 lenge of sparring with classical Jacobean contributions to the - 1614, safely beyond the earl of strictures. In 1610 he perfected genre. Jonson also left notes on Oxford's reach. his game - as F. H. Mares ob the extensive research underly serves, "Not only has The Alche ing the surface simplicity of Marie Merkel's poems have mist the most complete unity of his masques, much of which appeared in The Carolina action of any of Jonson's plays, overlaps with the wide-rang Quarterly and The New it also observes the other two ing knowledge informing The Republic. The first three of Aristotle's imputed unities Tempest. chapters of her unpublished with more exactness than any manuscript, The First Mousetrap: other play of Jonson's." (xiv) liN ext to truth, a confirmed Titus Andronicus and the Tudor Why would the earl of Oxford errour does well." Ben Jonson, Massacre of the Howards interrupt his astonishing run of induction to Bartholomew Fai1~ (a full-length study of the play's expansive dramatic singularity 1614 topical references to Edward to play the game by Benjamin's Oxenford's Howard relations) arbitrary rules? With Shakespeare as author of appear on her website, The Tempest, the play remains www. thefirstmousetrap. org. Masques, anti-masques and an echo chamber of enigmas She wishes to express her thanks spectacles and anomalies, more so than to Lori DiLiddo, Nicole Doyle and This is well-established Jon any other play in the canon. Anna-Marie Saintonge for their sonian territory, implicitly Harold Bloom's wonderful perceptive comments on earlier acknowledged by all scholars intuition holds firm: "Mysteri- drafts of this paper. Bibliography 26, No.1 (Winter 1975). !Jstor/. 2 Shakespeare, WiIliam. The Tempest. Barish, Jonas A. Ben Jonson and the February 2009.
WJRay
ith appreciation for Kath Although I discuss only "Sonnet cally complex enough to use W erine Chiljan's analysis IV" below, sonnets VI and IX are poetic disguise, since the broad of" A Lover's Complaint" Oxfordian/ Shakespearean for broom called genius seemingly (Chiljan 5-8) as Oxfordian, the same reasons. The reader is sweeps all personal detail aside. I should like to extend the invited to study them as a unit. Accordingly, though contrary discussion of Shakespearean to human nature and creativity, apocrypha, and to establish a Stephen Greenblatt in his rela the works exist marvelously like conclusion, that two more tively recent Will in the World free of authorial motivation. of the minor poems are trace repeats Feuillerat's language This merely flattens and de-hu able to Oxford - certainly without attribution or detail: manizes the writing. All artistic not to a provincial commoner "(Of the twenty poems in the col creation begins with someone's - and are linguistically lection, only five are actually by personal experience in a social consistent with the accepted Shakespeare)" (Greenblatt 235). frame. If I am right that Oxford Shakespearean canon. wrote this poem, "Venus and Dunton-Downer and Riding Adonis", and the rest, then it Indeed "Sweet Cytherea, sitting similarly comment in their 2004 makes sense that his primary by a brook", "Sonnet IV" from volume, Essential Shakespeare narrative method was the use The Passionate Pilgrim, and "Son Handbook: "In fact, only five of of allegory. Oxford had much to net IV" from Sonnets to Sundry its 20 poems are Shakespeare's" conceal and yet more to tell that Notes of Music go some distance (Dunton-Downer 458). was true. to show the academy's judg ment - that those poems are Greenblatt off-handedly com I "Sweet Cytherea, sitting not Shakespearean - ignores municates to the lay reader via by a brook" plain literary evidence to the the parentheses that his unsup Rather than accept scholars' contrary. ported assertion may be granted statements as definitive, let on authority alone and needs no us go to the text of the purged The 1927 edition of The Yale further inquiry. We have been number IV sonnet in The Pas Shakespeare includes a volume of facilely led from the ground sionate Pilgrim: short ballads, lyrics, and narra of scholarship into the domain tives edited by Albert Feuillerat. of "actuality" with no logical Sweet Cytherea, sitting by a His commentary states without bridge between. The term: Only brook much elaboration, "Out of the five are indisputably has been With young Adonis, lovely, twenty poems only five are abandoned. The unconditional fresh, and green, indisputably by Shakespeare. term: only five are actually has Did court the lad with many a These are numbers I, II, III, V been substituted. Feuillerat lovely look, of The Passionate Pilgrim and II allowed that there once may Such looks as none could look of Sonnets to Sundry Note" (The have been a dispute but it but beauty's queen, Yale/Venus 185). was resolved for five poems. She told him stories to delight Greenblatt erases any dispute by his ear; He does say about the others, dismissing disputation. She show'd him favours to al "It should be also be noted that lure his eye; IV, VI, and IX (of The Passionate None of the scholars takes To win his heart, she touch'd Pilgrim) are remarkable for their into consideration that "Sweet him here and there,- lack of imagery; they scarcely Cytherea" is allegory, a device contain any simile and meta employed doubly to narrate Touches so soft still conquer phor. The man who wrote them surface events and covertly tell chastity. was singularly devoid of imagi another tale. This critical over But whether unripe years did nation, a thing which cannot be sight betrays unexamined class want conceit, said of Shakespeare ..." (186). prejudice. They couldn't imag Or he refus'd to take her figur'd ine their man as autobiographi- proffer, The tender nibbler would not early pseudonym of Oxford's. received frequent tributes in touch the bait, In further description, the her reign as the moon goddess But smile and jest at even) youth is "young Adonis, lovely, Cynthia - the name Cytherea is gentle offer: fresh, and green." The French nearly homonymic with Cyn Thm fell she on her back, fair equivalent for the word green thia, granting her a like status queen, and toward: is vert, the Spanish is verde. The as simultaneously the goddess He rose and ran away; ah! fool latter word is a clever reverse of the moon and the chase. . too froward. (The Yale/Venus anagram of de Vere. Both The moon votary in the poem 116) Oxford and Elizabeth spoke encounters the short-living sun Spanish. Fresh in Dutch is vel's. god Adonis, relying for meta From the point of view favor The adjective lovely shares with phorical power upon the bond ing an historical affair between the sonnets' nomenclature the between those two celestial Oxford and Elizabeth I, this is sense of majesty and high rank, archetypes. as blatant a Mrs. Robinson-like someone worthy of allegiance. failed seduction as could be The poet is alluding to a young Oxford continued to couch his packed into the Shakespearean god of the sun. Collectively the life experience in mythologi- sonnet format. line is a string of clues about cal terms when in "Venus and himself. Adonis" he expanded into epic Comparing the historical Queen form the dramatic features of his and youth to the verbal alchemy The poem's reluctant hero is experiment in this Shakespear shown in "Sweet Cytherea", we named after Adonis, tradition ean sonnet. find remarkable fidelity between ally the hunter beloved of Venus what we know of the affair and and later slain by a boar, the We see a distinctive Oxfordian its artistic depiction. Fiction de Vere totemic animal, verres, stylistic feature as well, the feigns more than fact can say. in Latin. Working from my repetition of an ending word or assumption that Oxford later phrase in the beginning phrase Sweet Cytherea, named after lowered his visor and masked of the following line, a signature one of mythology's erotic himself Shake-speare, the poet technique that links together deities, symbolically equivalent here adumbrates key elements the obscure poem, Oxford as its with Venus, refers the reader of the 1593 epic poem, "Venus author, and the pseudonymous back to the Spartan island Cyth and Adonis", prefiguring the cypher Shake-speare. Note that era, known for murex, a purple hero's hunting avocation, the the words look and touch repeat dye sanctified since antiquity tryst's conjugal dynamic of in this poem: lines 3-4 and 7-8. as royal (Smith 101). In reading older woman and younger The same repeat pattern also the poem we are left in no doubt man, and most significantly, the occurs in "Grief of Mind" attrib which level of royalty Cytherea surrounding world - wild and uted to Oxford: "What plague is represents. From beginning to perfect Nature. greater than the grief of mind? I end, the tale's moving party The grief of mind that eat in is "beauty's queen", and she, The Greek word therios - from every vein.. ." (Shakespeare Vol. I "fair queen", falls on her back which is derived Cytherea 599). It occurs somewhere else, as Adonis bolts running like the - indicates the animal universe. in Comedy of Errors: "She is so wind. Sweet Cytherea is a passionate hot because the meat is cold I creature. She abandons herself The meat is cold because you According to Greek myth, the to her chosen love. Both the come not home . .." (Shake Island of Cythera was the birth early poem and later epic rely speare Vol. I 599). No other poet place of Aphrodite, goddess of upon the book of Venus and of the era but Oxford took on love. In this poem the archetypal Adonis in Ovid's The Metamor the challenge of echoing phrases lover, "beauty's queen", sits phoses wherein Venus was so end to end. by a BROOK. Lord Ox-FORD smitten that she had" forgotten thereby embeds his personal Cythera's flowery island" - in In a single rarely read poem with signature, as Alfred Hitchcock other words her purple robed no reputation we have encoun cinematically presents his comic majesty (Hughes 130). tered a master of evocation: rotundity, in the first entry of evoked identity clues, foreign the drama. The name Arthur In the poem's two-veiled ref language meanings, mythic anal Brooke has been proposed as an erence to Elizabeth I - who ogy, and stylistic cues. For a final (Apocrtjpha cont.) The cleverly planted epistemolo And there the boar, Oxford's gies and allusions in "Sweet ancestral totem, personified the identifying evocation, before Cytherea" may escape the first moral danger of his own animal the youth (Oxford) physically time reader or incurious scholar desire. The theme of animal breaks away, in the thirteenth - hence Feuillerat's rejection. desire reappeared in the late written line his patronymic Vere One may argue that the poem Shakespearean canon, notably (properly pronounced Vair) is not high Shakespeare: it has a in Othello, where that theme scripturally mates with the royal felicitous rather than profound became as inexorable and lethal love-goddess. The words fair narrative style. The poem mani as the demonic boar of classical and queen - fair being a near fests, regardless of that conceit, myth. homonym to Vere - conjoin as masterly command of language a phrase as Cytherea falls on her and of a poetic form first used For our present discussion back and Adonis flees. by Oxford's uncle Henry How though, we see recurring clues ard. The poem so effortlessly that an aristocrat, self-coded in This verbal ambiguity of fair / conveys familiarity with the the poem as both de Vere and vair no doubt had more evoca courtly romantic tradition that Oxford, wrote "Sonnet IV" of tive power to the author's "Sweet Cytherea" appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim. Further original courtly audience than the poetic miscellany entitled more, its narrative is consistent it does in today's predisposi THE Passionate Pilgri111e/By W. with Oxford's station, his love tion toward a rural superman Shakespeare in 1599 (The Yale/Ve affair with Elizabeth I, and his as author. We can't understand nus 185). worship of Nature. The poem's the words' meaning if we thematic features and drama tis ignore what they tell about him Dating the poem is a matter personae are identical to those - his experience and his social of deduction, as we have no of Shake-speare's first heir of his frame. Certain words mean so record. Something that indicates invention: "Venus and Adonis". much to a writer they must re its general time-span is the appear. Fair is such a word for poem's post-youthful tone. The II "Whenas thine eye hath Oxford/Shake-speare. Fair did hero both lives and fears the chose the dame," reappear in subtle code in the power of his carnal vitality, a To take another example, sonnets' reference to the Fair youthful trait. He impulsively Feuillerat rejected "Sonnet IV" Youth, de Vere's son Henry, runs away from his tryst - as in Sonnets to Sundry Notes of as proposed in Whittemore's the youthful Oxford escaped Music, and his criticism is brief: thesis:- (Whittemore 820). Very Elizabeth's court to Europe in early, fair had become a posses 1573. I propose that this would "The other poems in the book sive, evocative of someone de place the affair in the early [The Passionate Pilgrim] - with Vere held dear. Fair queen takes 1570s, and the poetic representa the exception of VII, X, XIII, on the meaning that she is his tion some time later but before XIV and I, III, IV of Sonnets to and of him, not only that she is the publication of "Venus and Sundry Notes, which have noth compelling. Adonis" in 1592-3. As to why ing Shakespearean about them the late publication in 1599 - have been restored to their As the brilliant but forgotten - according to Looney, after 1576 owners ... " (The Yale/Venus classicist Frederick W. Locke only three of Oxford's poems 186). asked, "Can any reader of were published under his name poetry deny that evocation is during his lifetime (Shakespeare The referenced Number IV one of the prime creators of Vol. I 553). This poem's author, poem is not a sonnet but, taking metaphor?" (Locke 304). And like the plays', lay hidden in the title of the cycle literally can any writer evoke meaning plain sight. - Sonnets to Sundry Notes of ful cues and references without Music - it is a musical inter the audience able to hear them? Only much later, in Venus and lude, elegant instruction to There is no evidence what- Adonis, did the force of Adonis' / young courtiers about the high ever that Shakspere of Stratford Oxford's animal nature become ritual of wooing. By the meter moved in Elizabethan court explicit. There Adonis' beloved and stanza length, the poem was circles or knew of Elizabeth's (and valuable) steed received a meant to be sung, perhaps with and Oxford's mutual past. testimonial not matched since the accompaniment of a lute. Virgil and Alexander the Great. Oxford was recognized early The instruction though light is laborative creation, as occurred and late as a highly skilled not trivial. It aims, like Messer in medieval guilds other than musician. The sweet songs Pietro Bembo in Castiglione's the then relatively new writing scattered through the plays are The Book of the Courtier, (78) to circles. explainable on this basis. There cultivate the virtue of the court has never been any documented Ier: Turbervile, Munday, Lyly, connection between the grain Whetstone, Googe, Brooke, merchant Shakspere and the Serve always with assured and Golding for example were English ballad tradition. The trust, authors associated with Oxford passage discussing music in And in thy suit be humble true; and to whom are attributed lit The Merchant of Venice remains Unless thy lady prove unjust, erature stylistically parallel with the most articulate statement Seek never thou to choose anew. Shakespeare texts - as described of music's effect on character When time shall serve, be thou in Shakespeare's Fingerprints by written in English. (The Yale/ not slack Brame and Popova. A compa Merchant 69-88) John Farmer To proffer, though she put thee rable example of the transitional praised Oxford. William Byrd back. (The Yale/Venus 127) literary guild would be Mary collaborated with him. Number Sidney's country circle at Wilton IV begins: Further on in the lesson sex with Spenser, Greville, Daniel, appears without prudish con Drayton, Breton, Watson, and Whenas thine eye hath chose straint, reminiscent of Chaucer: Fraunce (Williams 36). the dame, "Were kisses all the joys in bed,/ And stall'd the deer that thou One woman would another Corporate or guild circles should'st strike, wed." revolving around a wealthy Let reason rule things worthy brilliant aristocrat appear blame, The author displays comprehen more feasible and persuasive As well as fancy, partial wight: sive knowledge of an idealized in explaining linguistic paral Take counsel of some wiser courtesan's tempestuousness, lelism than the self-defeating head, inclination to be courted by conjecture that great master Neither too young nor yet un flattery, wish to be pursued, Shakespeare was, at one and the wed . .. (The Yale/Venus 126) voluptuous lust, and charm- same time, Western literature's ing hypocrisy. The ballad is a most blatant copy-cat. The song is high Renaissance musical equivalent, or perhaps fare, light-heartedly conceived a whimsical variation of "If Returning to our theme by someone" neither too young women would be fair and never - "Whenas thine eye hath chose nor yet unwed" and offered in fond", attributed by Chiljan to the dame" is Shakespearean in the context of a court of rich the composer William Byrd, and its distinct musicality and its barbarism: by Looney to the early de Vere depth of understanding courtly (Letters 172; Shakespeare Vol. I ritual, joined to ease at the bal Spare not to spend, and chiefly 595). lad form, and in an underplayed there/ Where thy desert may paideiac, or pedagogical, com merit praise, I am inclined to attribute the mitment to human perfectibility. By ringing in thy lady's ear: song to Oxford, because of the The latter vocation appeared The strongest castle, towel~ and narrator's closing reference to very soon in Oxford's literary town, himself as a fool: "To play with career, first expressed in the The golden bullet beats it fools, oh what a fool was I." It 1573 introduction to Beding down." (The Yale/Venus) is kin to the ending mood of field's translation of Cm"danus "Sweet Cytherea": "He rose and C0111forte: " ... lift up the base The golden bullet refers to the ran away; ah! Fool too froward." minded man to achieve to any modern missile, a rifle ball, be Since Shakespearean language true sum or grade of virtue ... " ing compared to Cupid's golden shows up in numerous contem (Anderson 65). arrow of love. Modern weaponry porary authors' works, authors was available only to the up- whom Oxford supported, and III The Cornwallis per class, and only its members for which they paid him dedica Apocrypha could pursue large game. tory tribute in return, the paral But the credibility of Feuillerat's lelisms can be likened to col- exclusion of "Whenas thine eye (Apoclypha cont.) his anagramic ever, and his The key word echo derives from hath chose the dame" fails not initials. the name of a mythological fig so much from textual as from ure, Echo - a nymph who spent detective evidence. Before its The image of sound re-sounding her days in rocky hills calling publication in 1599, the poem to all Nature's ears through all for love. Oxford's uncle Arthur was in Anne Cornwallis' com times, which began humbly in Golding first used echo as a noun, monplace book, a bound volume the heart's breath, must have according to the Oxford English with the title, MSS POEMS BY been a profound metaphor to Dictionary, in a Calvinist text. VERE EARL OF OXFORD, etc. Oxford as well as a hint of the Mark Anderson in Shakespeare civilized future. Books would Echo also bears a resemblance By Another Name stated that the convey to the writer spiritual to the common German word Cornwallises moved in 1588 into immortality. If the written Word echt, meaning genuine or true. Fisher's Folly, where previously echoes onward in another's Oxford communicated with Oxford had housed and trained breath, truth carries on forever. Sturmius, the German seer, at numerous writers. Thomas Even the word EchO (Edward/ various points of his life, includ Watson, Oxford's employee, Earl of Oxford) bespoke a bene ing a personal visit in 1575-6. stayed on to tutor the adolescent diction on his own identity. We may assume Oxford knew Anne (Anderson 231-3). We infer the German equivalent, echt, for he was the source of her practice In "Sitting alone upon my his own Latin-derived name, poetry texts, which included Sid thought in melancholy mood", vere = truth. There is an attenu ney, Raleigh, Dyer, Bentley, and (Letters 83; Shakespeare Vol. I ated form of echt in the poem Edwards, in addition to Oxford. 560) Oxford once again com "Reason and Affection" (Letters municated his identity by means 165; Shakespeare Vol. 1592). Circumstantial evidence does of encoding key words. The E-O not prove Oxford wrote a poem first-and-Iast initialling letters Thus, echo/ echt=true/=Vere later attributed to or at least of the word echo manifest one of contains a triple entendre imply included with the Shakespear his literary signatures. An elon ing his name and bounded by ean canon in virtually every gated repeated you and youth his initials, E and O. The rest of edition. But it most certainly also echo the pining lady in the the line, "told the truth", again reveals the social context of the poem, "ee-oo" (ee-you) acousti indicates Oxford's personal late 1580s English Renaissance cally expressing the author's identity (Vere) wedded to his in London - that of master initials. The initials themselves, life mission (truth). The verbal and men. There was no free E-O, when vocalized resemble construction is Kabbalistic in its agent who walked in and took the Italian first person singular economy. Truth must echo truth. the town by storm. And the pronoun, io. We are reminded of Or to quote the de Vere motto: Cornwallis commonplace book his declaration to Lord Burghley nothing truer than truth. logically excludes any claim upon returning from Italy: "1 am of authorship by the erstwhile that I am." It was a pun, men And the simile, "As true as hostler and loan shark called tally translated back into Italian, Phoebus oracle" in the last line Gulielmus Shakspere. He on his sounded initials, E-O. cues us to how much de Vere hadn't arrived in London then, Iago haunts the phrase when he identified with Truth as a mys so was not known as the author says in his depravity, "1 am not tical calling: Phoebus' oracle of anything nor was it his poem what I am." was at Delphi, where the gods copied out in the bound volume themselves voiced the prophetic belonging to Anne Cornwallis. As a climax of embedded self truth. Phoebus, like Oxford's identification, the last verse literary alter-ego Adonis, was IV Oxford's Echo Early and of the narrative compresses god of the sun. Late Oxford's persona in a triple The echo verses are attributed entendre. V Calling to the Future to Anne Vavasour in the Corn The metaphors of echoing and wallis commonplace book And I, that knew this lady resonance that characterized (Shakespeare Vol. II 380). How well, Oxford's early poetic thought ever, "Sitting alone upon my Said, Lord, how great a miracle, deepened in his maturity to the thought in melancholy mood" To her how echo told the truth, spiritual level. Suffering the fate is laced with echoes of de Vere, As true as Phoebus oracle. of the artist before that calling had social sanction, Oxford had Oxfordian constituency in the world. The Poems of Edward De Vere by J. been forced to stealthily silence The Shakespeare Papers appear on the Thomas Looney, Ed. Ruth Loyd any personal projection of his website, http://wjray.net. Miller. Port Washington, New York: life's work. His appeal for post Kennikat Press,1975. humous justice in this regard Bibliography Shakespeare Identified in Edward De occurred in Hamlet when Ham Anderson, Mark. Shakespeare By Another Vere and The Poems of Edward let gasps to his warrior cousin Name. New York: Gotham Books, 2005. DeVere. J. Thomas Looney. Ed. Ruth Horatio/Horace de Vere: "report Brame, Michael and Galina Popova. Loyd Miller. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. Port (i.e., re-carry) my cause aright Shakespeare's Fingerprints. Nevada: Washington, New York: Kennikat to the unsatisfied." Oxford had Adonis Books, 2002. Press, 1975. thus embedded into the play Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Shakespeare Identified in Edward De a last echo motif, the cry to Courtier. Ed. Friench Simpson. New Vere and Oxfordian Vistas.J. Thomas resound his spiritual testament York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Looney. Ed. Ruth Loyd Miller. 3rd ed. into future time. Oxfordians aim Co.,1959. Vol. II. Port Washington, New York: to honorably reply. Chiljan, Katherine. "Complaints About Kennikat Press, 1975. 'A Lover's Complaint'." Shakespeare Smith, Sir William. Smaller Classical WJ Ray is a West-Coast poet, writer, Oxford Newsletter, Winter 2008, 1 +. Dictionary. Ed. E.H. Blakeney and and cultural events producer in Dunton-Downer, Leslie, and Alan Rid John Warrington. New York: E.P. Willits California, where he and his ing. Essential Shakespeare Handbook. Dutton & Co., Inc.,1958. wife Judith have lived since 1971. Ray New York: DK Publishing, 2004. Whittemore, Hank. The Monument. became convinced that the Stratford Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World/ Marshfield Hills, Massachusetts: Shakespeare was a politically driven How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. Meadow Geese Press, 2005. myth and he began to study the New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004. Williams, Robin P., Sweet Swan of Avon/ issue after reading Freud, Looney, Hughes, Ted. Tales From Ovid/ Twenty Did a Womal1 Write Shakespeare?, and works published by the Miller Five Passages fro111 the Metamorphoses. Berkeley, California: Wilton Circle family. He collaborated with Michael London: Faber & Faber, 1997. Press, 2006. A'Dair to produce a series oflectures Letters and Poems of Edward, Earl of The Yale Shakespeare/ Merchant of Venice. on the topic to a full-house audience Oxford. Ed. Katherine Chiljan. San Ed. William Lyon Phelps. New in Willits, and the lectures became an Francisco: Katherine Chiljan, 1998. Haven: Yale University Press, 1923. introductory book as well as a DVD Locke, F.W., "Dante's Perilous Cross The Yale Shakespeare/ Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and the Minor Poems. Ed. shown repeatedly on local television. ing." Symposium. Winter 1965: Albert Feuillerat. New Haven: Yale Willits is thus the highest per capita 293-304. University Press, 1927.
Much Ado ... on the Hudson
Stephanie Hughes
y family and I had a won western shore, the river dotted Court on the lawn of some great Mderful time last weekend at with sailboats, it's as though one estate in one of the summer the Hudson Valley Shakespeare of the great nineteenth century bowers built to keep off the Festival's production of Much paintings from the Hudson weather, watching the original Ado About Nothing, performed in River School has come to three cast perform this play. (and around) a big circus type dimensional life. tent on the grounds of Boscobel, Although the director calls one of the great estates that Like most of the audience, we his preferred style of costume line the Hudson River as it picnicked first on the lawn. design steampunk, the result for approaches Manhattan. Rather Once within the theater tent the audience is a happy sub than a painted backdrop, the where protected from the weath mersion in the holiday world audience sees the action taking er - though luckily we needed that Shakespeare portrays in place before a living vista of no protection on this beautiful most of A Midsummer Night's the valley as day draws slowly evening - we observed the odd Dream, parts of Twelfth Night, Act down to night. Located at one of behavior of some beings from IV of A Winter's Tale, Act V the most scenic junctures of the another time. We could have of Two Gents, and most of As river, facing West Point on the been sitting with the English (cont'd on p. 47) Book Review: Soul of the Age, the Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate
(UK: Penguin Books, Ltd. Oct. 2008; published as the author's creative fiction and illiterate commoner-business Soul of the Age: turn it into speculative biogra man from Stratford. A Biography of the Mind of phy. William Shakespeare, Greenblatt is the most imagina US: Random House, In contrast, classic literary tive of the three, opening his April 2009.) biography shows how the narrative with "LET US IMAG known biography of an author INE" in capital letters. Weis is is reflected in his or her writ the most comprehensive, teasing Richard F. Whalen ings, and there are hundreds of out improbable factoids with his examples of such biographies. favorite device: "If so, then ... " irst came Harvard's Stephen The best writers write best about He anticipates Bate, seeing his FGreenblatt in 2004 with Will what they know best, their own Shakespeare as a regular" com in the World, which he admitted life. Their life experience and muter" between London and was an imaginary biography of deepest concerns are reflected Stratford, a regular guy "no ... his "Shakespeare" of Stratford in their writings. Once the life different from the rest of us." on-Avon. Necessarily" an exer is known, the writing is illumi cise in speculation," he called it. nated. Bate does it best. He mines the plays and poems expertly for Then in 2007 came Rene Weis of Apparently, these are desperate whatever he can find that points University College London with times for Shakespeare biog to a grammar school" country Shakespeare Unbound, his desper raphers. They are reduced to boy" Gust like him?) who be ate attempt to find the Stratford making up a biography of the came the world's greatest writer. man everywhere in the works of Stratford man as the author and He repeatedly urges, "Let us Shakespeare. selling it to unwary readers. It's imagine" (although not capital not biography. It's historical ized). Now comes Jonathan Bate of fiction, and their books should Warwick University with Soul of be shelved with the fiction titles. Here is Bate's methodology the Age, in which he also prom But desperate times call for in his own words: "Gathering ises to find the biography of his desperate measures, and Shake what we can from his plays and man from Stratford in the works speare being Shakespeare they poems: That is how we will of Shakespeare. get away with it, so far. Unwary write a biography that is true readers probably believe every to him." For support, he cites It looks like a trend, if not a word of it. the critic Barbara Everett: "If movement, by Stratfordians to his biography is to be found it intensify their search for Will Oxfordians might grasp at some has to be here, in the plays and Shakspere in Shakespeare's straws of hope that if these three poems, but never literally and works. It's been done before self-styled biographers were to never provably." (her emphasis) in bits and pieces, but now, research far enough into Eliza within four years, three eminent bethan history and think hard For most scholars, evidence Shakespeare establishment enough about it they'd have that is not literal is conjectural scholars have been driven to to recognize that the works of and evidence not provable is publish backwards biograpny. Shakespeare reflect in many and speculative. Thus, Bate endorses Lacking an historical biography varied ways the actual, known literary-historical biography that of their man, they back into biography of Edward de Vere, is conjectural and speculative. one by trying to conjure it from the 17th earl of Oxford. But that Essential to his methodology is the Shakespeare works. Their may be too much to hope for, looking for what he calls "traces sources for biographical facts given their career-long commit of cultural DNA-little details are not historical documents; ment to the probably uneducat such as a reference to Warwick they pick what they want from ed, certainly untraveled, mostly shire or the knowledge of a par- ticular school textbook. .. to make plays, including books in French For the general reader who surprising connections." But the and Italian and concluding, is unaware of the historical little details in the Shakespeare "These speculations are of realities and the case that can works that Bate cites throughout course biographical fantasy. But be made for Oxford as the true his book are not unique to Wil the point is a serious one." And author, Bate will probably be liam of Stratford, and they are these speculations are based persuasive. He's a clever and en truly "little details." in large part on speculations, gaging writer. He takes this life namely, the Stratford man's of "n1undane inconsequence" So for Oxfordians, nothing much alleged but unproven friendship (Sam Schoenbaum's words), new. Bate takes only three very embellishes it, goes into flights brief, indirect swipes at anyone of fancy and re-imagines it with who thinks someone else, like multiple little details from the an earl, wrote the Shakespeare Let us imagine Shakespeare [of Shakespeare works-irony of works. ironies, works that were written Stratford] at the vety end of his by the 17th earl of Oxford. For 486 pages he retails all the career, sorting through his book supposed, little connections chest. My guess is that it would More informed readers, espe between the Shakespeare works have contained no more than cially those who know how and William of Stratford, bol about forty volumes and possibly proper biography is written, stering them with speculations, will no doubt be skeptical. They conjectures and rhetorical ques as few as twenty (excluding his would not tolerate backwards tions that suggest even more own). biography for any other literary outlandish bits of biography. figure. Bate has done his homework, - from Soul of the Age by and he offers detailed argu Jonathan Bate. Richard F Whalen is the author ments that might interest a ofShakespeare: Who Was He?: student of the authorship issue The Oxford Challenge to the who wants to see how far the Bard of Avon, co-editor with arguments for the Stratford man Professor Daniel Wright of The can be taken and what needs to with Richard Field, the printer Oxfordian Shakespeare Series, be done to counter them. from Stratford, and his "very and editor/annotator of Macbeth in probable" acquaintance with the series. He is past president of He has a full chapter on John Florio, the London-born the Shakespeare Oxford Society "Shakespeare's Small Library," scholar of the Italian language. and a regular contributor to the wherein he discusses at length Of course there is no evidence Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter. sources for the Shakespeare for any of this.
Register for the 2009 joint conference of the Shakespeare Fellowship and the Shakespeare Oxford Society November 5-8, 2009
Houston Intercontinental Airport Ooubletree Hotel, Houston, Texas
Registration form on back page of this newsletter or register online at: http://www.goestores.com/catalog . aspx?Merchant=shakespeareoxfordsociety&Oeptl D= 170579
Online hotel reservations at: http://doubletree.hilton.com/en/dt/groups/personalized/HOUAPDT-SH P-200911 05/index. jhtml Update on Eagan-Donovan film project
Cheryl A. Eagan-Donovan our ever-living poet. He is also undeniably sexy. hat if Shakespeare was Wbisexual? What if Shake An A-list party boy on the speare was French? What if continental circuit, a true alpha everything you knew about male, Edward de Vere was a Shakespeare was wrong? man quite unlike any other. My documentary film project, The true challenge in making Nothing is Truer than Truth, looks a contemporary film about at the process of writing, where Shakespeare is in making life experience, imitation of the Shakespeare sexy. To compete masters, and relentless revision with the absurdist queercore come together to create genius, satire of Bruno, the teen angst as the key to discovering Ed fantasy world of Harry Potter ward de Vere as the true author and the Half Blood Prince, and of the works attributed to the explosive testosterone of William Shakespeare. The film Michael Bay's blockbuster Tran will reveal de Vere's epic life formers: Revenge of the Fallen, the story and introduce a brilliant, Cheryl A. Eagan-Donovan filmmaker must totally reinvent troubled, charming man. Shakespeare. is an acknowledged expert on Having secured the documen language, neurobiology, and Not that it hasn't been done tary rights to Mark Anderson's the definition of genius. In his before. Shakespeare in Love seminal biography Shakespeare book The Blank Slate: The Modern started an Academy Award By Another Name, I began by Denial of Human Nature, Pinker winning streak for the Wein interviewing the leading Ox concludes, II Almost by defini stein brothers and Miramax fordian scholars, documenting tion, art has no practical func that lasted close to a decade. the ongoing debate about the tion, and as philosopher Dennis Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + significance of authorship, Dutton points out in his list of Juliet transformed the classic the role of biography, and the universal signatures of art: art love story into a psychedelic meaning of genius. With over 60 universally entails virtuosity spectacular and outrageous hours of footage, I have pro - a sign of genetic quality, the musical. Gus Van Sant's My duced two fundraising trailers, free time to hone skills, or both Own Private Idaho paid homage and have had the great privilege - and criticism that sizes up to Orson Welles' Shakespeare, of meeting some truly extraordi the worth of the art and the with Falstaff and Prince Hal as nary and exceedingly generous artist. archetypal class warriors and people. On screen, Sir Derek comrades. Most recently, Hamlet Jacobi and Mark Rylance regale In The Mating Mind, the psy 2, the little indie that could, us with their unique portraits chologist Geoffrey Miller argues did, raking in a cool $10 million of the earl, and British historian that the impulse to create art is a in box office, targeting YouTube Charles Bird takes the viewer on mating tactic: a way to impress viewers. a walking tour of Castle Heding prospective sexual and marriage ham, home of the De Vere family partners with the quality of Everyone's read Shakespeare. In since the days of William the one's brain and thus, indirectly, China, the poet formerly known Conqueror. Without the support one's genes. Artistic virtuosity, as the bard is a status symbol, of the many Shakespeare Oxford he notes, is unevenly distribut as sought after as Gucci acces Society members who have ed, neurally demanding, hard to sories. What they don't know is donated their time and financial fake, and widely prized. Artists, that Shakespeare really is dead. resources to the film, I could not in other words, are sexy. After 400 years, what scholars have made such progress. around the world have discov Nothing is Truer than Truth will ered is that Edward de Vere, Harvard Professor Steven Pinker focus on the eighteen month Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, is has agreed to an interview. He period when De Vere escaped the confines of life at the court time would present an aesthetic If you would be willing to help of Elizabeth 1, and traveled the philosophy that would later be organize a screening in your Continent from his home base developed into the works of neighborhood, please write to in Venice gathering material Shakes-speare. me at eagandonovan@verizon. for the great canon that would net, and if you can make a become known as the works of I began my career as a writer, donation to the project in any Shakespeare. It is my immedi and I know a good story. Noth amount, please visit our website ate and pressing goal to raise ing is Truer than Truth unveils a at www.controversyfilms.com. enough funds to begin principle multi-media portrait of one man photography this year, shooting whose life story is perhaps the As a writer, I am determined to on location in Italy and France. greatest story ever written. The tell this story. With your sup trick is to convince the funders port, Nothing is Truer than Truth Mark Anderson describes what and distributors. will prove that the universal Edward de Vere encountered on appeal of Shakespeare's work his visit: With blatant disregard for the is due to the fact that the true previously mentioned box office author was a perfectionist, a The Venice of1575 was the New successes, they seem to think world traveler, a temperamental, York City of its day - a world fi that if Shakespeare is dead tempestuous trouble-maker, and nancial center,fueling an ongoing most of all, a writer. explosion oflearning, literature, theatre, music, and art. The city Cheryl Eagan-Donovan studied nicknamed La Serenissima had, An A-list patty boyan the Shakespeare and wrote poetry as a with the economic and artistic literature major at Goddard College, decline of its rival Florence, continental circuit, a true alpha and holds a business degree from become perhaps the premier Boston University. She served as cultural capital of late sixteenth male, Edward de Vere was a publicist for the award-winning century Italy. Reaching the shore features All the Rage (Roland of the Venetian lagoon sometime man quite unlike any other. Tec 1996) and Could Be Worse! in mid-May 1575, the conte (Zack StJ'atis 2000). Her debut d'Oxfort had finally arrived. documentary All Kindsa Girls (2006) screened at film festivals and By the 1570s, Venice had become in theaters in London, Toronto, and perhaps the most vibrant theatri - that no one will want to see a throughout the US. She is President cal com111unity in all of Europe. film about Edward de Vere. One of Women in Film & Video/New One can readily envision how, as strategy that has proved effec England and serves on the Board of this aristocratico inglese settled tive in today's independent film Directors of The Next Door Theater into his new hometown, he also marketplace is the collection in Winchester, Massachusetts. began attending plays thatwould of zip codes, and the construc Contact: Cheryl A. Eagan-Donovan, be meting out ideas, plots, char tion of a database of cities and Controversy Films, 119 Braintree acters, and inspiration for the towns, throughout the country Street, Suite 509, Boston, MA 02134, rest of his life. The theatrical and around the world, where 617-987-002, eagandonovan@ mixture ofhigh and low, refined film audiences are guaranteed to verizol1.net, Fiscal Sponsor: IFP and proletariat, comic and tragic, turn out for a screening. New York, www.iofp.org. that graced Venetian stages at the Altrocchi and Whittemore build the case
he first five volumes of a the Shakespeare Authorship Truth -Fact Versus Fiction in the Tnew series of books entitled Trust. When, in 2006, Professor Shakespeare Authorship Debate Building the Case for Edward De William Leahy of BruneI Univer • Volume 3: Shine Forth - Evi Vere as Shakespeare, edited by sity organized the first graduate dence Grows Rapidly in Favor of Paul Hemenway Altrocchi and degree program in the world on Edward de Vere as Shakespeare Hank Whittemore, is now avail Shakespeare Authorship Stud • Volume 4: My Name Be Buried able online at iUniverse.com, ies, both societies permanently -A Coerced Pen Name Forces Amazon and Barnes & Noble loaned their books and papers the Real Shakespeare into Ano booksellers. The books attempt to the English department of nymity to preserve authorship research BruneI, located in Uxbridge, a • Volume 5: So Richly Spun in book form for scholars, stu suburb of London. - Four Hundred Years of Deceit dents and general readers. The are Enough series begins with work done in Through the courtesy of Dr "These first five volumes in the early twentieth century lead Leahy, De Vere Society Presi clude research and writings ing to "Shakespeare" Identified by dent Kevin Gilvary, Charles in the early stages by dedi J. Thomas Looney in 1920 and Beauclerk, and other members cated people such as Eva Turner continues up to the 1960's, with of the board of trustees of the Clark, Marjorie Bowen, H.H. more volumes to come. Shakespeare Authorship Trust, Holland, B.M. Ward, Percy Altrocchi and Whittemore were Allen, Gerald Rendall and so "This series is the result of Paul's able to study and copy this early on," Whittemore said. "In later (Altrocchi) vision of compiling Shakespeare-authorship mate stages these same books include our literature from its earliest rial. They have made these dif articles and excerpts from other stages and preserving it in book ficult-to-find articles and book giants in the field - Charles form. We started a couple of excerpts available in the first Wisner Barrell, Montague Doug years ago and now the first five five volumes of Building the Case las, Louis Benezet, Esther Sin volumes are published," co for Edward de Vere as Shakespeare. gleton, Gwynneth Bowen, Alden author Hank Whittemore said. Brooks, Dorothy and Charlton "This collection already stands "Here is the legacy of the great Ogburn, Francis Edwards and as an overwhelming argument papers and publications that Ruth Lloyd Miller." against all those phony attacks have developed and expanded on anti-Stratfordians in general the Oxfordian thesis over the Whittemore said he wishes that and Oxfordians in particular. It's generations - starting with Sir he had this work at his finger manifestly clear that these' ama George Greenwood in the early tips when he learned about the teurs' were neither 'lunatics' nor decades of the twentieth century Oxfordian movement more than 'snobs' nor 'conspiracy nuts,' but, and Looney's identification two decades ago. They would rather, some of the finest scholars of Edward de Vere as "Shake have given him an understand anywhere. The depth and breadth speare" in 1920," Whittemore ing of early Oxfordianism and of their work is remarkable. In said. "The idea was to assemble prevented him from "re-invent my view theirs is the best Shake as much as possible of our most ing the wheel". spearean work of all." important literature all in one place, rather than leave these "So this series of volumes will Whittemore explained that most works scattered everywhere in be there now and in the future of the early literature pointing hard-to-find newsletters, jour for students, scholars and the to Edward de Vere as the author nals, books and so on." general public," Whittemore of the Shakespeare works ap said. "There will be no question peared in obscure newsletters, The first five volumes in the about the scope and integrity of magazines and currently out series include: the Oxfordian movement." of-print books. Some of this initial research work is of el • Volume 1: The Great Shakespeare The authors intend to ask cur egant quality and only recently Hoax - After Unmasking the rent researchers to join them in emerged from years of storage Fraudulent Pretender, Search for collecting their work in single by two of England's authorship the True Genius Begins volumes, possibly ending with groups, the De Vere Society and • Volume 2: Nothing Truer Than up to 20 volumes in the series. (Conference continued from page 1) Whittemore proven to be an excellent way The well-known absence of Whittemore's show is based on of presenting a complex set of books and manuscripts in the his theory of what the sonnets historical and literary facts in an will is accompanied by the glar are all about as expressed in entertaining manner. ing omission of any bequests his 2005 book, The Monument. for his daughters' education, or The theory is, in brief, that the Whittemore remarked later to the town - for example, how Fair Youth is the third earl of that the church venue, with its about something for that famous Southampton, the Dark Lady slightly raised stage in front grammar school that taught him is Queen Elizabeth, the Poet is of rows of seats, high ceiling so well? Bequests to schools Edward de Vere, seventeenth and the impressive backdrop of from formidable citizens were earl of Oxford, and that the windows and decorations was often present in wills exam- story being told is of the Essex an intriguing venue to perform ined by Cutting. This is where Rebellion - Southampton's in. After the show he and Alex Cutting's diligent work over crime in participating, his death McNeil answered audience several years in comparing the sentence, and his reprieve. questions. Everyone adjourned Stratford will to many others of Whittemore posits the hidden to a wine and hors d' oeuvres the period shows that the Strat story behind the known story reception in the church activity ford man seemed to have had no of the Essex Rebellion is that room. literary interests during his life Southampton could have been, or after it, and furthermore, as and perhaps should have been, Cutting some of us joked after the pre Henry IX. The 90-minute one The first of four presentations sentation, his will in comparison man show, which Whittemore in the library on Saturday was to others of his time reveals him has presented 15 times since given by Bonner Miller Cutting, as cold - not generous. Cold. last year, was well received by daughter of Oxfordian stalwart But you won't find that in any the audience. This show has Ruth Loyd Miller. Cutting had mainstream discussions. come to town all the way from Houston to participate. Her talk Anderson Building the Case expanded on the presentation Mark Anderson spoke on the re she gave at the joint Shake cent Cobbe portrait controversy for Edward de Vere speare Oxford Society jShake and expanded his comments as Shakespeare speare Fellowship Conference to include the Ashbourne por last October in White Plains, trait. The Ashbourne graces the Editors: New York. cover of Anderson's 2005 book Paul Altrocchi & Shakespeare By Another Name Hank Whittemore as Cutting has been examining a split image with the Welbeck Important new anthologies Shakespeare of Stratford's portrait of Oxford. The Cobbe containing vital early will for several years, and has portrait was recently discovered Oxfordian articles and book developed insights that are by its owner to be identical to excerpts. noteworthy. She has examined the Janssen, a putative portrait Volume 1: The Great 2000 other wills from the same of Shakespeare owned by the Shakespeare period to make comparisons Folger Shakespeare Library. The Hoax with the Stratford will, and the Cobbe was unveiled with great Volume 2: Nothing Truer results are not flattering. For fanfare by Stanley Wells and the Than Truth example, everyone knows about Shakespeare Birthplace Trust as Volume 3: Shine Forth the bequest of the" second-best being a "true likeness" of Shake Volume 4: My Name Be Buried bed" to his wife, but Cutting's speare, painted in his lifetime Volume 5: So Richly Spun research makes it unmistakable and most likely the model for that this was at least a deliber the Droeshout engraving in the Now available from: ate insult to his wife, if not an First Folio. iUniverse Publishing outright attempt to disinherit (800-288-4677 her by mentioning only the bed Anderson has written about ext. 5024), Amazon.com, and and nothing else. For example, the Cobbe portrait on his Barnes & Noble. he treated his sister Joan much blog several times since the more generously. story first broke a few months (Conferellce COllt.) view that The Tempest is differ the 1590s" takes a closer look ago, and most of us in the ent from the rest of the canon. at some of the lesser known audience were aware of it. He She also presented some inter historical and publishing events highlighted the story in the esting lists of textual analysis that occurred during the same Times Literary Supplement by and word usage demonstrating period that Shakespeare burst Katherine Duncan-Jones that that the play has many charac upon the scene. I consider that dismisses the Birthplace Trust teristics that are not character Shakespeare himself - Edward claim, and agreed with her that istic of Shakespeare. As anyone de Vere, seventeenth earl of Ox the portrait is most likely of involved in the authorship ford - was keenly interested in Sir Thomas Overbury. The real debate knows, The Tempest, its the issue of who would succeed story here is that Stratfordians sources, and its actual date of Elizabeth 1. The Shakespeare are actually engaged in the au composition are a hot topic plays - Richard II, for example thorship debate sub rosa when because any bona fide composi - and poems - Venus and they reach out like this - any tion of a Shakespeare play after Adonis, Rape of Lucrece - pub thing to make Shaksper more Oxford's death in 1604 would lished during this period may real is the name of the game. knock him out of contention. have been written, or re-written, The second part of Anderson's But as Merkel's presentation with the succession issue in talk was on the authorship demonstrated, mainstream mind. debate itself, including a point scholars puzzle over this play he has been making for several as much as Oxfordians. For Two publications were the focus years now: that after 1604 no of much of my talk: new sources or historical facts are ever used or alluded to in First is a pseudonymous po the Shakespeare canon. This is The real story here litical tract, Conference about significant since 1604 is the date is that Stratfordians are the Next Succession to the Crown of Oxford's death. actually engaged in the of England (1594/95), which authorship debate sub rosa is concerned with the rightful Merkel claim to the English throne after Marie Merkel led off the after when they reach out like this Elizabeth and which prominent noon session with a provocative - anything to make ly features the historical story of presentation in which she put Shaksper more real Richard II as a good example of forth the idea that perhaps The is the name of the game. rightly deposing a monarch. The Tempest was actually written by 1595 printing in London of Con Ben Jonson. This is a topic that ference also features a dedication Merkel has been pursuing for to the earl of Essex claiming several years, and there's no that he and his followers would doubt that it is controversial, more information on The Tem "settle the succession," thus no matter where one stands on pest debate see the Oxfordian bringing together Essex, Richard the authorship debate itself. But Roger Stritmatter-Lynne Kos II and the succession issue all at The Tempest is different from the itsky essay at the Shakespeare once. rest of the Shakespeare canon Fellowship website and the in a number of ways, and the Stratfordian David Kathman A second publication of note differences have been com essay at the Shakespeare Au was Willobie His Avisa (1594), mented upon for a long time. thorship Page. a notoriously enigmatic poem Oxfordians understand this about Avisa and her five suitors, very well, since J.T. Looney in Boyle that has front matter containing his 1920 Shakespeare Identified As the final speaker of the day I the first reference to "Shake felt obliged to write an appen reprised a talk given last fall at speare" as an author (of Lucrece), dix in which he claimed that the joint SF /SOS Conference in and even alludes to Avisa and The Tempest was probably not White Plains, with some updates Lucrece as being the same by Shakespeare. from the Shakespeare Author person. The identity of Avisa ship Studies Conference last has puzzled scholars for more Merkel quoted such mainstream April in Portland, Oregon. My than a century, but I believe the scholars as Harold Bloom and presentation titled "Shakespeare problem was solved in 1970 by David Lindley in support of the and the Succession Crisis of Barbara N. De Luna in her book The Queen Declined. Her solution commented to us later about her may be the best way to have an has great implications for the experiences in organizing this event that would draw in new authorship debate. event. She said that her primary people. The organizing group goal was to have an event that will consider this approach Avisa is identified as being none combined both a relaxing, next year, for which planning other than Queen Elizabeth, party-like atmosphere such as is already underway. While and the suitors are the well the Oxford Day Banquets, plus this year's symposium had no known suitors in her lifetime some good intellectually satisfy overall theme, for next year that include the earl of Essex ing presentations the next day, consideration is being given to and his step-father the earl of including time for discussion, focusing on the Roman plays. Leicester. Since Willobie also and would still leave time for DiLiddo credits Prof. David includes a peculiar section attendees to talk with each other Lowenthal of Boston College - inserted into the section about and relax. The two day format for suggesting that the five Essex and Leicester - in which was perfect for this. Roman plays as a group might an "olde player" named "W.s." prove to be an interesting topic, (most likely meant to represent DiLiddo also took note of some since each one covers succes Shakespeare) is advising a thing that Mark Anderson had sive periods. "young actor" named "H.W." told her about his experiences (most likely meant to represent during his book tours over the One might ask why this pattern, Henry Wriothesley, third earl of and why this period in Roman Southampton) on how to woo history. Did the author have Avisa, several important ques In my youth I had been an an agenda in doing this? The tions arise: First: why was this ardent Oxfordian ... but I have Oxfordian perspective might insert added to this section of in the last half-century - for provide an intriguing way for Willobie? And second: How can different speakers to explore this a "W.s." from Stratford be an better or worse - rejoined topic. expert on wooing Avisa if Avisa the orthodox Stratfordian is the Queen of England? mainstream. But there remain a Titcomb host of questions that have not Arts critic and blogger, Harvard I emphasized that this view been satisfactorily answered University Professor Emeritus of Willobie His Avisa brings Caldwell Titcomb, PhD, attended together the queen, Essex, by anyone. So the battle will the seminar and wrote up the Shakespeare and Southampton. certainly continue for a long event within a week. He was This view, when coupled with time. Caldwell Titcomb, PhD thorough and fair in his report the politics of succession in both ing at The Arts Fuse blog. Titcomb Conference about the Next Succes gave a detailed summary of sion and Shakespeare's Richard past several years, namely that each talk without passing any II, has great significance for most folks don't know what Ox judgments on any of them. He understanding Shakespeare's fordian means. So care was taken concluded his article with an role in the succession crisis of in the publicity for the event interesting note about his own the 1590s. It also is key to under both to explain that presenta position on the authorship ques standing how the Shakespeare tions would be "Shakespeare tion: authorship problem may have from the Oxfordian perspective" had its roots in Elizabethan suc and to explain what is meant by In my youth I had been an ardent cession politics. "Oxfordian perspective." Oxfordian ... butIhavein the last half-cen tury -for better orworse DiLiddo Another important decision -rejoined the orthodox Straiford The day concluded with this that the organizers made was to ian mainstream. But there remain final talk. Attendees hung out ask only for donations at both a host of questions that have not for a while with ample time to the show on Friday and the been satisfactorily answered by meet and talk about what had talks and catered box luncheon anyone. So the battle will certainly been presented. This was a very on Saturday, relieving prospec continue for a long time. well organized, fun event. Plans tive attendees of having to are already under way for next commit to paying anything in Two local Stratfordians who spring. Organizer Lori DiLiddo advance. DiLiddo felt that this did not attend the symposium (Conference cont.) He was especially intrigued by In all, this brief two-day event commented on Titcomb's article. Merkel's theory on The Tempest, brought together many of the Thomas Garvey at The Hub and noted that it was something Oxfordian regulars in the area Review blog was most telling new. Several comments on his and a fair number of new-com about the true conundrum in the site did have something to say ers. "Symposium: Shakespeare debate when he wrote: about the notion of Ben Jonson from the Oxfordian Perspec writing The Tempest, which can tive" is now destined to become But Oxfordian textual claims be summed up in two words: an annual spring event in the are easily undermined by the "No way!" Merkel, however, Boston area. possibility that Edward de Vere wrote a good response in the may indeed have been a model for comments section, laying out Bill Boyle works as a cataloger at Hamlet without having been the some of her reasoning. At that the Social Law Library in Boston, author ofHamlet. (As it's known point no one responded, and the Massachusettes. Bill has been that de Vere sponsored theatre thread died out. active in the Oxfordian movement companies and therefore probably for 30 years and has been a regular mixed with actors privately, it's Congratulations are in order at conferences for the last 20 years, quite possible Shakespeare could to all involved in planning reporting on talks, taking pictures, have picked his brain for all and running the Symposium: and in recent years, presenting manner of details for Hamlet, or Lori DiLiddo, the symposium papers. He was the editor of other plays.) organizer, Chuck and Carole the Shakespeare Oxford Society Berney of Watertown, Barbara newsletter fro 111 1995 to 2001, Garvey concedes a key point Hansen, Anne Atheling, Judith and the Shakespeare Fellowship in the debate - the Hamlet-de Christianson, and Alex McNeil newsletter, Shakespeare Matters, Vere connections - and then who did all the introductions from 2001 to 2005. On the Internet can only resort to the it's-quite and was also emcee for a Shake he founded the Shakespeare Oxford possible line of reasoning to spearean/ Oxfordian quiz after Society home page in 1995, and have the Stratford man channel lunch. the Ever Reader website in 1998. ing de Vere rather than de Vere His current cyber-life includes writing about himself. We should also note that right maintaining a new website and blog before lunch Cheryl Eagan The Shakespeare Adventure, http:// Duane Morin at Shakespeare Geek Donovan showed a clip of her www.shakespeareadventure.com. gets right to his point in the first upcoming documentary based and a Shakespeare/Shakespeare paragraph: on the life of Edward de Vere, authorship library with an Nothing is Truer than Truth online catalog The New England I'm not sure if I'm happy or sad - information is available at Shakespeare Oxford Library, http:// about this. Seems just last week the Controversy Films website. www.shakespeareoxfordlibrary. there was a 2 day Shakespeare The film will be available soon org. He is also working in conference right in my backyard and should add more fuel to the cooperation with the Shakespeare (Watertown,MA). Unfortunately authorship fire. Several of those Authorship Research Cen tre on itwas about Shakespeare Author in attendance - Alex McNeil, an online Shakespeare Authorship ship - "mostly Oxfordians", the Hank Whittemore, Mark Ander Resources database (SOAR), to be post tells us. So perhaps it would son and Chuck Berney - were announced later this year. not have been my cup of tea. featured in the clip shown. Shahan's letter to Shermer, the skeptic
n July 24, 2009, independent Court Justices and so many Scientific American. If I thought OOxfordian researcher John other prominent, well-educated you understood, I would take Shahan sent this letter to the ed people. it to heart; but I don't think itor in reply to Michael Sherm you do understand. Sorry this er's column, "Shakespeare, Orthodox scholars say there's email is so long. If I didn't care, Interrupted," in the August "no room for doubt" about the I wouldn't bother to address 2009 issue of Scientific American: au thor. They use this false claim to your issues, but I've tried to do http://www.scientificamerican. stigmatize and suppress the issue so in some detail. com/article. cfm ?id=skeptics in academia. It is a taboo subject. take-on-the-life. This is wrong. The authorship Can a theory be discredited issue doesn't belong in the same before being replaced? Shahan wrote: category as teaching intelligent You say that, "reasonable doubt As a skeptic myself I usually design alongside evolution. It should not cost an author his agree with Michael Shermer, but should be regarded as a legitimate claim, at least not if we treat noton the Shakespeare authorship issue. That's what the Declaration history as a science instead of question. On that issue, I fin d Mr. is about. as a legal debate," and also that Skeptic's position oddly credu "In science, a reigning theory lous. Shermer objects to Justice Shahan sent this email is presumed provisionally true John Paul Stevens' declaration in to Skeptic Editor Michael and continues to hold sway the WSJ that "the evidence that Shermer on July 28 unless and until a challenging (Shakspere of Stratford) was not (The presentation has been edited theory explains the current data the author is beyond a reason for ease of reading. Ed.) as well, and also accounts for able doubt." To hear Shermer anomalies that the prevailing tell it, one would think that Dear Michael, one cannot." To the extent that Justice Stevens is the first and this refers to Justice Stevens, only authorship doubter to serve Naturally I am very disap he said "beyond" a reasonable on the Supreme Court. On the pointed in your column, doubt and did name a challenger contrary, others include Justices "Shakespeare, Interrupted," in whose claim he sees as superior Scalia, O'Connor, Blackmun and Scientific American. I had the - that of the seventeenth earl of Powell, as the WSJ article noted. impression that you were recep Oxford. Only two current Justices (Breyer tive to Oxford's candidacy; evi and Kennedy) openly support the dently not. I don't know how Judges deal with questions Stratford man. I got on the wrong side of you of evidence, including scien and Frank (Sulloway, author of tific evidence, and that is what Other prominent doubters Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Fam Stevens' opinion is based on. He include Mark Twain, Walt ily Dynamics and Creative Lives, says the reigning theory should Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emer Ed.) I think of myself, first and be overturned. You may dis son, William and Hennj James, foremost, as a scientist. It's agree, but he never said that he Charles Dickens, John Galswor all those English professors thinks Shakspere's claim should thy, Sigmund Freud, and Shake who are not. I think highly of fall based merely on "reasonable spearean actors Orson Welles, Sir you, or I wouldn't have ap doubt." If writing the works John Gielgud, Sir Derek Jacobi, proached you in the first place. were a crime, there wouldn't Michael York, Jeremy Irons and I based my strategy partly on be enough evidence to convict Mark Rylance. Over 1.500people, my reading of Born to Rebel, Shakspere beyond a reasonable including nearly 300 current and which analyzes how paradigm doubt; but the earl of Oxford fonner facu I ty members, many of shifts take place. In 2002, I could probably be convicted. them scientists, have signed the reviewed it for The Oxfordian. Stevens is qualified to make that Declaration ofReasonable Dou bt I wrote and presented a paper judgment. He has followed the (www.DoubtAboutWill.orgi based on it in New York and controversy for twenty years declaration). How ironic that Carmel in which I proposed since participating in a moot Shermer, the professional skeptic, the Declaration strategy. How court trial. He has a perfect right rejects out of hand the informed ironic that you, of all people, to speak out. skepticism offive U.S. Supreme would now be attacking me in (Shahall COllt.) issue, making it a taboo subject on evidence, without necessarily To the extent that it refers to me, in academia. Thus the need to knowing what alternative will I have never said that the reign point out the reasons for doubt. end up taking its place. Science ing theory should be overturned Pointing out anomalies in a does not advance only by all-or based on reasonable doubt, and reigning paradigm is a perfectly nothing leaps from one theory the Declaration doesn't say that legitimate part of the scientific to another. The" anomalies" that either. Its stated purpose is to process. There is no requirement you mention can accumulate un legitimize the issue in academia that every article aim to over til an existing theory is rendered by calling attention to problems turn a paradigm. untenable before anything takes with the case for Shakspere. Is its place. I doubt that either it not a legitimate part of the You say, "we should grant that Thomas Kuhn, or your buddy scientific process to call atten Shakespeare wrote the plays Frank (Sulloway), would agree tion to "anomalies" that don't fit unless and until the anti-Strat that a theory cannot be discred the reigning paradigm? That's fordians can make their case for ited before being replaced. all we have done, and all we've a challenger who fits more of ever claimed to have done. Your the literary and historical data." The naked emperor comment suggests otherwise. I respectfully disagree. We What you seem to be saying is should grant that Shakespeare this: "How dare you point out If the issue is legitimized, and that the emperor isn't wearing scholars turn their attention to any clothes until you have the it, I have little doubt about who Well, at some point the power to place a new emperor on will emerge as the author; but of emperor's nakedness the throne!" Well, at some point course it depends entirely on the the emperor's nakedness is just evidence. Speaking of evidence, is just too obvious to ignore. It too obvious to ignore. It may not I am perfectly willing to have a may not be polite to point out be polite to point out that the neutral panel of scientists rule that the emperor is naked, and emperor is naked, and some will on authorship-related issues some will prefer not to notice; prefer not to notice; but some within their area of expertise. times the best way to bring about That's why I came to you. but sometimes the best way to change is to call attention to all You weren't interested. I am bring about change is to call of the anomalies that don't fit still willing. It's the orthodox attention to all of the anomalies the reigning theory at once, and Shakespeare establishment that that don't fit the reigning theory make them clear to everyone. doesn't want a neutral, objective panel of scientific experts ruling at once, and make them clear to That's what we've tried to do on the merits. everyone. with the Declaration of Reason able Doubt, and I think we're The reason why I focused first succeeding. The reference to on Shakspere isn't because the wrote the plays unless and until "reasonable doubt" is deliberate case for Oxford is weak; rather, someone makes a compelling understatement. Justice Stevens it's a huge circumstantial case evidentiary case that he didn't. recognized it as such, and felt that's much more difficult to Proving that someone else did is compelled to make an even communicate. The orthodox one way to prove he didn't, but stronger statement. He knows distract attention from the case not the only way. It's possible to a naked emperor when he sees for Oxford by claiming there prove a thing didn't happen one one, and would say no less. You is "no room for doubt" about way without knowing how it may not agree that the emperor Shakspere. They're correct that did happen. is naked, based on your reading this question logically comes of the evidence, but there's no first. If there's no room for Your formulation is descriptive rule in science against us pre doubt about him, then there's no of how science normally pro senting our case that we think point wasting time considering ceeds, but there is no "iron law he is. anyone else. That has been their of science" that says one must position, so it's perfectly legiti accept a reigning paradigm until Scott McCrea on Shake mate to challenge it. They use it is replaced. There is no reason speare's education their' no room for doubt' claim why an existing theory cannot I was not impressed with Scott to delegitimize and suppress the be thoroughly discredited, based McCrea's article in Skeptic. His book was reviewed negatively no less an education than did at Court. You Strats can't have by Richard Whalen in the Shake Prince Edward, and no less on it both ways. If you're going speare Oxford Newsletter (Vol. the Grammar School model-par to argue he didn't spend much 41, No.4, Fall 2005), and so I ticularly that ofEton. This would time at Oxford and Cambridge, never read it. The premise of mean that Oxford too would have you can't then expect them to be (McCrea's) article that Oxford, been drilled in his accidence, and reflected in the works. unlike Shakspere, did not get from the au thorized grammar of a grammar school education is William Lily." Gray's Inn incorrect. Robin Fox, University Interestingly, McCrea has Professor of Social Theory at To read McCrea's article, one nothing to say about the one Rutgers University, points out in would think that Oxford's edu school where we have reason his forthcoming article, "Shake cation began at age eight, when to believe Oxford did spend speare's Education: The Gram he matriculated at Cambridge. time. He enrolled at Gray's Inn, mar School Reconsidered" (The What does he think Oxford where he studied law. Scholars Oxfordian, Vol. XI, 2009), that was doing until then? There is have long known that Shake everyone who got an education nothing about the evidence of speare was steeped in the law. at the time, from the king down, Shakespeare's familiarity with One reason so many anti-Strat had the same grammar school grammar school texts that can't fordians are lawyers is they rec curriculum, and used the same be explained just as easily by ognize the Bard as one of their texts. That includes Edward Oxford's authorship of all the own. Sir George Greenwood, a de Vere. McCrea makes much plays. Fox's article points out distinguished lawyer and MP, of the fact that Shakespeare that (Oxford's grandfather, the analyzed his use of legal terms seems to have been familiar fifteenth earl) was instrumental and metaphors in great detail, with Lily's grammar of 1557. in the founding of the grammar convincing Mark Twain that he Oxford was age seven in 1557, school at his ancestral seat of had to be a lawyer. Stratford and almost surely studied it. Fox Earls Colne and (Oxford) was ians claim that his knowledge is one of the most widely-read involved with its affairs. of law is imperfect, and no anthropologists in the world. He more than he could have gotten grew up in Yorkshire during the You say that, "de Vere's parti out of books. Mark Alexander 1930s, and attended the modern sans exalt his education at both demonstrated that this clearly day descendent of a grammar the University of Cambridge is not so in his article, "Shake school. He writes as follows: and the University of Oxford speare's Knowledge of Law: A and believe that the plays could Journey through the History of " ... the education of royalty and only have been penned by some the Argument" (The Oxfordian, nobility was not simply mod one of such erudition." You give IV, 2001, 51-121). (Alexander) eled on the Grammar School, it no quote. I doubt you can find a says that Shakespeare never was for at least the foundational recent one. JT Looney never said makes a mistake in his use of years the same in all its details. that the author must have been legal terms and metaphors. Edward de Vere, after his father's "university-educated." You and Those who claim otherwise death, was the ward of the same McCrea seem ignorant of the are always in error. Neverthe William Cecil who was at the fact that Oxford did not spend less, Alexander concludes that, heart of the group of St. John's much time at Oxford or Cam "What distinguishes Shake men who formed the education of bridge University. Both of the speare's use of legal terms has Prince Edward. Cox, the (future degrees he received from them nothing to do with the quantity king's) first tutor, had drawn up were honorary. Stratfordian of terms he uses, or his mere the Eton curriculum, which he Alan Nelson made much of this, technical accuracy in legal mat then followed. Can it be doubted trying to claim that Oxford was ters: Shakespeare had a wide that Oxford's education then fol not really very well educated; ranging legal understanding lowed the same pattern? He was but this will not fly. As a noble integrated into his conscious raised in the household first ofSir man, he had outstanding tutors. ness, the kind of consciousness Thomas Smith ... a remarkable A dearth of university references that would draw on legal terms man of learning and diplomacy, in the plays is hardly disqualify in non-legal contexts, where the and, among other things, Provost ing. Oxford was educated first apt legal metaphor of excellent ofEton. Between Smith and Cecil in rural Essex, and then mainly understanding and quality is then, Oxford would have received at the home of William Cecil and applied (111). (Shahan cont.) quires a better explanation than was probably involved in the " There is no evidence Shak that. work of translation. Golding spere had legal training, and dedicated one of the volumes to even McCrea, apparently, has Ovid is universally recognized his 16-year-old nephew (Ox not tried to argue that he did. as Shakespeare's single most ford). Strange that he would omit important source. He did not that from an article on how the just know "many" of the works, Greek educational backgrounds of as McCrea puts it. He knew all McCrea says there's, "no different claimants are reflected fifteen books of the Metamorpho evidence the author knew the in the works. Perhaps it is dealt ses like the back of his hand. He (Greek) language." This is false. with in his book? used everyone of them some He clearly had knowledge of the where in the plays, and every Greek classics, and used them Romans one of the plays makes extensive in the plays; this despite the McCrea says, "Shakespeare's use of them. Furthermore, fact that most had not yet been borrowing from minor Roman Shakespeare clearly knew them translated into English. Oxford writers comes exclusively from not only in the Golding transla- would have learned Greek not at school texts and books of Latin Cambridge, but from his child adages and fragments young hood tutor, Sir Thomas Smith, grammarians were forced to The Roman history plays are an outstanding Greek scholar. memorize. What's interesting based largely on the Amyott See, for example, the article, is he doesn't stray far beyond (French) translation of Plutarch's "Shakespeare's Lesse Greek," by these writers ... " This is not true. Lives, which was not in the Andrew Werth at Washington He was very widely-read in State University (The Oxfordian, the Latin classics, and not only grammar school curriculum. An Vol. 5, 2002, 11-29). The allega English translations. The Roman extant record in Lord Burghley's tion by Ben Jonson in the prefa history plays are based largely papers shows that a copy of tory matter to the First Folio on the Amyott (French) transla it was purchased specifically that Shakespeare had" small tion of Plutarch's Lives, which Latin and lesse Greek" is highly was not in the grammar school for Oxford, at his request . .. misleading. curriculum. An extant record in when he was twenty. Nobody Lord Burghley's papers shows knows how Shakspere could Italy that a copy of it was purchased have obtained a copy, or how he McCrea has a hard time explain specifically for Oxford, at his re ing how the author knew the quest (and also a Geneva Bible), could have read it even if he did plots of plays written in Italian, when he was twenty. Nobody - despite McCrea's fantastic which hadn't yet been translated knows how Shakspere could speculations that he learned into English. This is no problem have obtained a copy, or how French. for Oxford, who clearly knew he could have read it even if he Italian and spent much time in did (despite McCrea's fantastic Italy. McCrea never considers speculations that he learned tion, bu t also in the original why the author was so enam French). Latin. ored of Italy in the first place, setting numerous plays there. Ovid Being part of the grammar Several scholars of Italy have McCrea gives short shrift to school curriculum hardly ac demonstrated that the knowl Ovid,merely noting that, "The counts for the extent of Shake edge of Italy in the plays is so most prominent of the [Latin speare's knowledge. Oxford, on precise that it could only have poets Shakespeare borrowed the other hand, was the nephew been known to someone who from] was Ovid, many of of Arthur Golding, and they had traveled there. whose works the author knew, both lived in Burghley's house and whose Metamorphoses, the hold (300 people, regarded as If one looks at a map of all the Elizabethan classroom favorite, one of the finest colleges in all Italian cities Oxford visited, was routinely studied alongside of Europe) when the Golding that's where Shakespeare set his the Golding translation (1567)." translation of Ovid's Metamor plays. None of the plays is set Shakespeare's knowledge and phoses was produced. Some in any of the major cities Oxford use of the Metamorphoses re- evidence suggests that Oxford did not visit. When he returned to England, he set a new trend Shermer's bias and lack of Oxford was an outstanding toward Italian manners, dress information poet, who, due to his position in and culture at Court, and was You point out that Shakspere's life, published anonymously, or known to foreign diplomats as father was "middle-class" by under pseudonyms. the "Italianate Englishman." Stratford standards, ignoring the fact that both of his parents, and Schurink French also both of his daughters, were You also seem unaware that McCrea says anti-Strats, "have a illiterate. That is highly relevant Fred Schurink of the Univer point when it comes to French," when talking about the develop sity of Newcastle Upon Tyne because "The Bard writes in mental years of a literary cre turned up clear evidence in that language in Henry V and ative genius. He grew up in an 2006 that "Shakespeare" was The Merry Wives of Windsor illiterate household! and never seen as a pseudonym at the and scatters Gallic words and educated his daughters! What time of the First Folio. Schurink, phrases throughout the Canon." literary genius, while portraying a confirmed Stratfordian, no We know that Oxford studied women as well-educated in his ticed oddities in references to French daily at Cecil House, and plays, would neglect to teach his Shakespeare in Thomas Vicars' his earliest extant letter, at age daughters to write, and leave no manual of rhetoric, published 13, is in perfect French. money for education in his will? in three different editions in the 1620s. In the 1624 edition he lists "But," McCrea says, "William You say that, "Some anti-Strat four outstanding English writ Shakespeare didn't need to go fordians question Shakespeare's ers, omitting Shakespeare. In to university to pick up the existence." I have never en the 1628 edition, he included the tongue." Rather, "In the mid- countered any such person, nor following correction: "To these 1590s ... he lived in the same have I ever seen anything like I believe should be added that ward that was home to "Petty that in writing. Can you cite an famous poet who takes his name France" (the French district), example? If any such persons from 'shaking' and' spear,' ... " and could hardly have avoided exist, they are not representa The odd format of this reference them." So in his early thirties, tive. Any theory has a right to implies that the name was seen along with everything else he be judged by the best arguments as a made-up or pen name. was allegedly doing - acting of its strongest proponents. regularly, managing a theatre The explanation offered is that company, writing plays at a You say that, "the number Vicars knew the Stratford man furious pace, keeping tabs on of references to him from his wasn't the author, and didn't business affairs and family in own time [to Mr. Shakspere want to imply acceptance of him Stratford, preparing to purchase of Stratford, or to the author in the first edition of 1624, so he New Place, we are told that Shakespeare, whoever he was, left him out. But by the time he he just couldn't help bumping and how do you know?] could published the 1628 edition, he into Frenchmen who lived "in only be accounted for by a had figured out a way to include the same ward" and learning playwright of that name (unless a reference to Shakespeare the language so well that he de Vere used Shakespeare as a - in a way that would signal dropped words in "throughout nom de plume, for which there the name was a pseudonym the Canon," and was able to is zero evidence)." Actually, all (Shakespeare Oxford Newslet include convincing dialogue it would take would be one clear ter, Vol. 44: No.1, Spring 2008). among members of the French reference to Shakspere as the The fact that the name was often royal family in Henry V - em author anytime before 1616 to hyphenated on the works also bellishments, jokes, obsceni put the authorship controversy strongly implies that it was a ties and all - almost as if he to rest. Here's your big chance. pseudonym. had been there. Do you find this credible? McCrea notes You seem unaware that George There is also the evidence of that Shakspere lived with the Puttenham, in The Art of English the Sonnets. The author himself Mountjoys from 1602-4, but Poesie, named Oxford first on a says that he does not expect his Henry V and The Merry Wives of list of courtiers who wrote well, name to be remembered (#81), Windsor were written by 1599. but suffered it to be published does not want it to be remem Oops! without their own names to it. bered (#72), and that the Youth Puttenham clearly implied that shouldn't be seen to mourn for (SlzalwlI COllt.) in his late-forties, resting on his true author were spawned from him after he dies (#71). None of laurels, supposedly famous. the same germinal belief in the this makes any sense, unless the inadequacy of Shakespeare's author's true identity was not Surely someone to whom he education,u This is false. It's just yet known at the time. wrote should have kept one a cheap magician's trick to make letter. Other letters survived. all of the other kinds of evidence Diana Price There are records of people be disappear so that he does not You say that Ualthough Shake ing interested in his son-in-Iaw's have to deal with them. Reading speare skeptics note that there medical records, and purchasing his article, he never names, much are no manuscripts, receipts, them, apparently without ever less quotes, any Oxfordian since diaries or letters from [Shaks inquiring about any papers of Looney, who published his book pere or Shakespeare, either one], Shakspere's. in 1920. McCrea gives no indica they neglect to mention that we tion of having read Looney. have none of these for Marlowe, Trevor-Roper either.u It is simply untrue that You prefer the views of a theater Looney had never heard of we've neglected to compare professor to those of a Supreme Oxford when he developed the evidence of a literary back Court Justice, but what about his profile of the author, us- ground between Shakspere and the views of a top Oxford his ing deductive logic to infer his other writers of his time, includ torian about what we should characteristics from the works. ing Marlowe. That's one of the expect to find? As stated in the He came up with eighteen char main things that Diana Price did Declaration, UHugh Trevor-Rop acteristics of the author, only in her book, Shakespeare's Un er, Regius Professor of History one of which relates to educa orthodox Biography (Greenwood at Oxford University, found tion. One thing he did not claim Press, 2001). Apparently you Shakespeare's elusiveness' exas about the author's education is haven't read it. perating and almost incredible that he necessarily attended a ... After all, he lived in the full university! It's orthodox scholars who daylight of the English Renais never bothered to systematically sance in the well-documented McCrea ignores all of the other compare the kinds of literary reigns of Queen Elizabeth and traits that Looney deduced from evidence extant for all of the King James I, and ... since his the works, all eighteen of which writers of the period. Price death has been subjected to the fell instantly into place as soon found that Shakspere was the greatest battery of organised as he discovered Oxford for the only one of twenty-five writers research that has ever been first time. of the time for whom she could directed upon a single person. find none of ten different kinds And yet the greatest of all Looney's book is, for its time, of evidence suggesting a literary Englishmen, after this tremen a masterpiece of empirical career. He is an extreme outlier dous inquisition, still remains so methods. Mortimer Adler, series in this sense. close to a mystery that even his editor of the Great Books Series, identity can still be doubted.'" said it was one of the best books Marlowe's situation was very (UWhat's in a Name?" Realites, of the 20th century. You should different from Shakspere's. November 1962.) read it before jumping to con He died young, unmarried, clusions based on McCrea. The disgraced, murdered, and an ac Trevor-Roper was the British reasons for doubting Shakspere cused atheist. Who would have intelligence officer who tracked go way beyond just education. kept his papers? Why? Shake Hi tIer during WWII, and wrote McCrea ignores everything else. speare was supposedly the U soul the highly-acclaimed book, The He seems stuck in a time warp, of the age!" His acting company Last Days of Hitler. I have much pretending Oxfordians have became the UKing's MenU at more respect for his views than made no progress in almost the Court of King James I. He McCrea's. ninety years, so he can just divided his time between Lon stereotype us, and then attack don and Stratford - a situation Spawned from the same his own stereotype. conducive to correspondence germ - and his home remained in Now let's look at another of Simonton his family for generations after McCrea's basic premises. He The current issue of the Mensa he died. He retired to Stratford claims that, U ... all versions of the Research Journal contains an article titled, "Shakespeare's erable selfeducation. Notonly are Omnivorous Oxford small Latin and less Greek: creative writers unusually prone Right, this is the crux of the matter, Scientific perspectives on educa to be omnivorous and voracious not whether Shakspere may have tion, achieved eminence, and readers, but the amount of that attended Stratford's grammar the authorship controversy," by reading is positively associated school. Oxford was apparently an Dean Keith Simonton, Distin with achieved eminence. And omnivorous and voracious reader. guished Professor of Psychology this stipulation is the crux of the He was a patron of writers, musi at the University of California matter. The fact is that we have cians and artists, who held him in at Davis (Vol. 40(2), 2009, 22-26). no direct evidence whatsoever the highest regard. Twenty-five Simonton is regarded as one of that the Stratford man was a works were dedicated to him, the world's leading experts on man of letters. Not one letter some praising his literary achieve creativity and genius. He's a that he wrote, nor any book that ments. No work was dedicated to member of my academic advi he owned or read, has ever been Shakespeare. sory board, and wrote the article found. Not one thing about at my request. After reviewing Shakspere's will suggests that it How likely is it that Shakspere the evidence, he wrote the fol was written by a man who had became a voracious reader in lowing conclusion, the first part lived the life of a writer, much childhood, before entering gram of which supports your position, less the writer Shakespeare. His mar school, with illiterate par but the second part of which own children were illiterate, a ents? Early childhood education poses major problems for you: is very important to the devel opment of a literary creative On the Straifordian side, high Oxford was apparently an genius, and Shakspere did not levels of formal education and live in an environment condu exceptional scholastic success omnivorous and voracious cive to such development. But are by no means required for reader. He was a patron of as the Declaration says, "This extraordinanj achievement as a writers, musicians and ariists, is not to say that a commoner, creative writer, and especially who held him in the highest even in the rigid, hierarchical not as a poet. Certainly a college social structure of Elizabethan degree is not a requisite. Indeed, in regard. Twenty-five works were England, could not have man the arts and humanities a college dedicated to him, some praising aged to do it somehow; but how degree is predictive ofless success. his literary achievements. could it have happened without To be sure, some college education No work was dedicated to leaving a single trace? Orthodox is generally better than none at scholars attribute the miracle to all, but this does not mean that Shakespeare. his innate" genius," but even a someone with only a high school genius must acquire knowledge degree cannot reach the highest ... Academic experts on char ranks. In fact, for the creators surprising outcome if Shakspere acteristics of geniuses see little in the Cox (1926) sample, those was spending numerous hours reason to think that Mr. Shaks with just high school were bet reading the historical and liter pere was a genius." Simonton is ter off than those with master's ary works that underlie his plays one of the" experts" referred to. or doctoral degrees (Simonton, and poems. Worse, one has to 1983). Hence, the fact that Shak wonder whether even the best Attached is a book review [see spere seems not to have gone to education available at the local SO Newsletter, Vol. 37, No.3, Cambridge or Oxford tells us very grammar school would suffice for Fall 2001, 13] of Simonton's little according to these results. the man to become as well-read Origins of Genius, Darwinian The only real question is whether as he needed to be. Shakespeare Perspectives on Creativity (Oxford he obtained a sufficiently good betrays considerable competence University Press, 1999), focusing education at the grammar school, in modern languages, including on implications for authorship. and the answer to this issue will French, and especially Italian. The book spells out in detail the probably never be known with To become broadly read outside developmental characteristics confidence. English and Latin literature may that one would expect to find in not have been possible given the a literary creative genius. The On the anti-Straifordian side, grammar school training most review first describes these char any dearth of formal training likely offered at the Stratford of acteristics, and then examines shou Id be compensated by consid- Shakspere's youth. the extent to which each applies (Shahan cOllt.) Ten Eyewitnesses Who Saw contributions when you have to Oxford and Shakspere. Ox Nothing," by Ramon Jimenez done your homework; but a ford clearly has all of them, and (Shakespeare Oxford Society little knowledge is a danger he has them in spades. Fiftieth Anniversary Anthology, ous thing, especially when it is 1957-2007, 74-85). It is one very mostly on one side of an issue. Shakspere has none of them. important article. If Shakespeare Note: Prof. Simonton's article in the The results of Simonton's work were really the author, it could current issue of the Mensa Research on genius couldn't point more not have been written. These are Joumal is available by subscription or strongly toward Oxford, or away examples of the solid academic purchase. The Mensa Research Journal website is at: http://www.mensa!olmda from Shakspere. I expect that you research that backs up every tion.orgiSiteslfoulldati01t/Navigation will find it both interesting, and thing we say in the Declaration. M ell lllPU b lica tiollsfiou1'1la VCurrell- relevant. Seen in this context, ti ss u e/Curren tIssu e. h tm whether or not Shakspere at If you are still interested in tended grammar school seems sponsoring a debate, I suggest John Shahan is Chairman of the like a red herring. What about that it be between Scott McCrea, Shakespeare Authorship Coalition all the other prerequisites to the and Oxfordian Mark Anderson, (www.DoubtAboutWill.org), and development of genius? It's easy author of "Shakespeare" by An principal author of the Declaration to frame an issue such that only other Name. I'm still willing to of Reasonable Doubt About the one's own research paradigm help bring that about, and will Identity of William Shakespeare. seems relevant. That's typical of welcome your involvement if He is a former vice president of the academics who see only through you can put in the time to be Shakespeare Oxford Society, and has the lens of the own discipline. come well-informed. served on the editorial board of The Oxfordian. His main areas of interest I will also send you separately Stick to what you know in the authorship controversy are how a copy of the article, "Shake Otherwise, please stick to what paradigm shifts take place, and the speare in Stratford and London: you know. You make wonderful nature of creativity and genius.
Concordia call for papers
Prof. Daniel Wright, Director Shakespeare. This is a rich topic, paper - of approximately 30-45 of The Shakespeare Authorship about which much has been writ minutes reading length - ac Research Centre at Concordia ten, but as authorship skeptics, we companied by an annotated University in Portland, Oregon have a fresh perspective with which bibliography of all sources cited. has issued a call for papers to re-focus the world's attention In lieu of a complete paper .. for the annual conference to in our efforts to reveal the hidden . the submission of two hard be held April8-l1, 2010 at the mystery and majesty of this body copies of a detailed abstract and university. Deadline for papers of work - and provide a pathway to annotated bibliography (is the is October 31,2009. the goal of enlarged understanding minimum necessary). A current by forging into the canon, aided curriculum vitae or professional The theme for the conference by juried scholarship, with an eye biography with a record of all is "The Queen inl and Shake to better discerning and disclosing publications and a history of speare". Wright said: what these plays say about sover conference presentations should eignty - and the English Sovereign. accompany submissions of Papers should focus on significant papers or abstracts. Candidates observations of what likely are al The conference website at: will be notified by late Novem lusions to the Queen in the Shake http://www.authorshipstudies. ber if their proposals have been speare canon with an emphasis on orgiconferel1ce/papers.cfm gives accepted. Mail submissions to: our ability, with the application the following directions for Prof. Daniel Wright, Director, of sound literary critical tools, to submission: The Shakespeare Authorship Re determine their significance in search Centre, 2811 NE Holman, order to assist us in identifying the To apply for consideration for Concordia University, Portland, relationship - if any - of the Crown, a place on the 2010 conference OR 97211-6099. in the person of Elizabeth, to the agenda, applicants should mail writer who called himself / herself two hard copies of a proposed (50S President cont'd from p. 2) via blogs and even YouTube compile the strongest possible report on the ongoing project I videos, conduct interviews with case for posthumous publica have referred to as the Posthu the media, and go forth aggres tion. The notion of posthumous mous Sonnets Project. In recog sively to deliver presentations publication is anathema to nition of the 400th anniversary and lectures on this topic at Stratfordians and most anti of Shake-speare's Sonnets, the SOS Shakespeare-related conferences Stratfordians for one simple rea Board of Trustees has declared and seminars, along with com son: establishing that the poet 2009 to be the Year of the Son munity organizations, libraries, William Shakespeare died before nets. high schools and colleges. I 1609 would eliminate just about plan to present the findings of every authorship candidate I talked about the Posthumous the research on our annual joint with two exceptions - Marlowe Sonnets Project during my conference scheduled for this (died 1593) and Oxford (died presentation at the annual November in Houston. 1604). Taking all of the available conference in White Plains last evidence into account, Oxford's October and encouraged SOS I believe this research - and the death in 1604 fits the posthu members and others undertake PR effort behind it - has enor mous publication theory like a a cooperative research effort. mous potential for positively glove. Marlowe - although dead Since then I have launched a shaping the Shakespeare author by 1609 - would appear to have posthumous sonnets blog at ship debate in the years to come. died much too early to be the www.ShakespearesSonnets1609. It's essential that we take advan author of the sonnets, not to wordpress.com and have formed tage of the news "hook" pro mention many other works of an informal posthumous son vided by the 400th anniversary Shakespeare. nets group (PSG) to brainstorm to make the best case we can for ideas, compare notes, and test posthumous publication. Every other major authorship hypotheses and possible sce candidate was still alive in 1609 narios. The deliberations of the Making the case for post and for several years thereafter: PSG have been quite useful and humous publication Roger Manners, fifth earl of Rut I want to thank participants for In looking into the posthumous land (died 1612); Henry Neville their valuable input. publication topic, I have been (died 1615); William Shakspere somewhat surprised that the of Stratford (died 1616); Mary We haven't completed our work posthumous case has not yet Sidney Herbert, Countess of but I believe we have hit on been fully developed. Several Pembroke (died 1621); Francis many key pieces of evidence writers have touched on the Bacon (died 1626); William that support the hypothesis that posthumous publication topic Stanley, sixth earl of Derby (died the book of Shakespeare's Sonnets - including Thomas Looney in 1642). The 1609 posthumous published by Thomas Thorpe his landmark Shakespeare Identi publication theory would elimi in 1609 went to press after the fied. But it is often treated on nate all of these candidates from poet's death. The idea of this an offhand manner, almost as a consideration. project, ultimately, is initiate a throw-away item worthy of only complete communications effort a few supporting arguments. In Oxfordians, in particular, should behind the posthumous sonnets effect, I think the posthumous be keen to make the posthu hypothesis before the end of this publication issue has been given mous publication of the sonnets year. short shrift over the years and a central plank in the case for deserves much more scholarly Oxford's authorship - hence this The most important element focus. Posthumous Sonnets Project. of the communications plan is One of the arguments we're the publication of a research Biographers of the Stratfordian developing relates specifically to paper or monograph that lays persuasion cannot even contem the Stratfordian paradigm. My out a compelling case for post plate the idea that the 1609 book observation about the Stratford humous publication. We also of sonnets was published after ian authorship theory for many expect to issue a series of press the death of the poet - no matter years is that most so-called releases, craft several shorter how much compelling evidence Stratfordians are emotionally articles for publication in vari is staring them in the face. Nor - almost religiously - attached ous newspapers and magazines, have many Stratfordian skeptics to their theory of authorship. circulate our findings online over the years been motivated to This strong belief in the theory (50S COllt.) and Oxfordians alike, all of the Jones suggests that Shakespeare prevents Stratfordians from seri- following: had fled to Stratford to avoid a ously considering the substan- plague outbreak in London and tial evidence that contradicts • The absence of a dedication by therefore couldn't contribute a their theory. Theirs is a firmly the poet himself, even though dedication. This strikes me as a held belief - similar in many William Shakespeare wrote feeble attempt to overcome the respects to faith in the pre-Co- dedications for his two narra- obvious absence of the poet from pernican geocentric model of the tive poems "Venus & Adonis" the entire project. solar system. and "The Rape of Lucrece". • The dating of the composition of Shakespeare knew how to write the sonnets would also support Given this firmly held belief in a dedication. the posthumous theory. Most the Stratfordian theory, there • If still alive, a poet would nor- scholars believe the sonnets are many blind spots that keep mally contribute some kind were composed in the early-to- Stratfordians from seeing evi- of dedication in a publication mid 1590s, with a few sonnets dence that tends to undermine containing his poetry. It's highly written in the first few years of their belief. Stratfordians will unusual not to have a dedication the seventeenth century. Curi- see the evidence against the from the poet. ously, few if any scholars believe Stratford theory only when they • The generic title of the book any of the sonnets were written believe there is ground for rea- - Shake-speare' s Sonnets - sug- or revised after 1603/1604. sonable doubt. Until then, they gests that this is the complete • Many references in the son- will continue to ignore any and set of sonnets by Shakespeare nets themselves to the poet's all countervailing evidence. and that we should not expect advanced age, his anticipation to see any more SOlmets from of his impending death, and his This gives rise to the following this poet. expectation that his name would imaginative scenario: Imagine • The apparent absence of the be forgotten while the name of that this "booke called Shake- poetfrom the entire publication his beloved would enjoy "im- speares Sonnettes" was regis- process, that helps to explain the mortal life." tered and published exactly as number of errors contained in • Finally, I'll just mention the we have it today, only 10 years the text, including, for example, coup-de-grace, the one piece later - in 1619 instead of 1609. the inexplicable repetition of of evidence that has yet to be I present this scenario in the the phrase "My sinful earth" in adequately explained or refuted spirit of opening minds so the "Sonnet 146" and the absence of by Stratfordians: the reference evidence compiled for posthu- a concluding couplet in "Sonnet to the poet in the dedication as mous publication has a fighting 126". "our ever-living poet." There chance of not being reflexively • The total silence of the poet is no serious argument to be resisted and ignored. after the publication of the son- made against the obvious inter- nets. If the sonnets were pirated pretation that" our ever-living What would have to change - the consensus view among poet" means the poet, William about this book of sonnets if Stratfordians - surely a living Shakespeare, was dead by 1609. it had been published in 1619 poet who was as famous and Stratfordians have been trying instead of 1609? Clearly, if pub- favored by powerful patrons as to explain this phrase away for lished in 1619 - three years after the Stratfordians insist would centuries. If the sonnets had the death of William of Stratford be in a position to complain been published in 1619 instead - those of the Stratfordian per- and/ or correct the record about of 1609, Stratfordians would not suasion would readily accept this the sonnets. The total silence have to twist themselves into as a posthumous publication. of the poet after publication rhetorical knots to rationalize Every argument, every piece of speaks compellingly to the this straightforward description evidence that Oxfordians present posthumous theory. Katherine of the poet. They could accept for posthumous publication in Duncan-Jones tries to make the the phrase as meaning what it 1609 would be admitted without case that Shakespeare approved so patently means: The poet is objection by Stratfordians for a the publication and was even already dead. Stratford ian Don- 1619 publication. involved in the publication aId Foster admitted as much in a process to some degree. But she 1987 Proceedings of the Modern Posthumous publication in 1619 can't provide any evidence to Language Association 102 article would explain, for Stratfordians support this notion. Duncan- "Master W. H.: R.I.P." He said: .. In a fairly extensive search, I of this project is attempting to called Shakespeares Sonnettes" have not found any instance of do. My goal is to assemble the in 1609. We're hard at work ever-living used in a Renaissance best evidence so we can make to make that case in the most text to describe a living mortal, the following claim: Posthu compelling way possible. If including, even, panegyrics on mous publication is the only you have any ideas, pertinent Queen Elizabeth . . . though it viable explanation for all of the quotes, or supporting research does appear sometimes in eulo evidence. Some theories - such that you think should be in gies for the dead." (42-54) Jona as pirated publication - can cluded in this project, please let than Bate is even more concise. explain some of the evidence. me know. 1'm eager to hear from In The Genius of Shakespeare, But we can't cherry-pick the others who have researched this Bate wrote: "'Ever-living' was evidence. We need to lay it all topic over the years. No sense an epithet applied to dead poets, out there and come up with reinventing the wheel if others not living ones. The point was a reasonable and responsible have already assembled some that they were dead, but they explanation for all of the evi compelling evidence and argu lived eternally through their dence. We must find the clean ments on behalf of the posthu work." (63) est, simplest explanation for the mous sonnets theory. The above litany does not in available evidence. clude all of the evidence and Matthew Cossolotto, President arguments we're considering All things considered, I believe Shakespeare Oxford Society and I have only provided a posthumous publication of the PO Box 808, Yorktown Heights, very cursory overview of the sonnets is the explanation for NY 10598-9998 supporting information. I just all of the evidence associated (914) 962-1717. wanted to give members a sense with the publication of "a booke [email protected]
(Ado cont'djl'0111 p. 27)
You Like n holiday plays meant this is one of the most delicately The director of Much Ado, to be performed out of doors in tender of the Shakespeare ro John Christian Plummer, is an good weather. Far more than mances. The actors who per Oxfordian - with a TV series we could ever be in a theater, form the roles of Beatrice and based on Mark Anderson's here at Boscobel we are in the Benedick are more than up to biography, Shakespeare by Old English holiday world of the challenge, Jason O'Connell Another Name, up his sleeve merry-making where there is in particular bringing a wonder - and although I don't see how no past or future. One enters fully silly vision of Benedick as knowing that affects a particular into it, has as good a time as a louche narcissist who literally performance, if in any way it possible, and leaves it when it's falls all over himself when he inspired this excellent version of time to return to the workaday finds himself falling in love, this wonderful play, then efforts world of clocks and calendars. while Nance Williamson is all to get the Oxford story told have In this world there is no past or anyone could wish as the as borne some truly excellent fruit. future, so costumes can relate the sharp-tongued but tender to any period. It's the audience hearted Beatrice. "Everybody Stephanie Hughes is an educator and who, oddly dressed in T shirts plays the fool, one time, there's writer who lives in Nyack, NY She and shorts, seem tourists from no exception to the rule," goes is a former editor of the Shakespeare another time. the old song, and Shakespeare, Oxford Newsletter and the SOS and this wonderfully intuitive journal, The Oxfordian. Her work Much Ado is a comedy, of course, version of Benedick express this can be viewed on her blog, Politic so out under the summer sky timeless message, so welcome Worm at http://politicworm.com. The these professionals played it on a warm and timeless mid Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival broadly and yet not so broadly summer eve. is at Itttp://hvsltakespeare.org. that the tenderness is lost, for Registration form for the 2009 joint conference of the Shakespeare .Fellowship and the Shakespeare Oxford Society Novem ber 5-8, 2009 Houston Intercontinental Airport Doubletree Hotel Houston, Texas Name ------Street Address ------City State/Province ZIP/Postal ------Country ______E-mail Address ______
Choice of Entree for Sunday banquet: Beef or Chicken
___ One Day Registration: Thursday $35 (Presentations only)
______One Day Registration: Friday $60 (Presentations only)
______One Day Registration: Saturday $60 (Presentations only)
______One Day Registration: Sunday $35 (Presentations only) ___ Saturday Luncheon Buffet: $35 ___ Sunday Luncheon Banquet: $35
______Special student and teacher rate: $15 (For Saturday 1 :00 - 6:30 p.m. only) ______Number of Registrations for Selected Categories: Full Registration: $200 (Full registration includes presentations, Saturday luncheon buffet and Sunday luncheon banquet) Total amount to be paid $ ______(Payment in US dollars only) Check Money Order made out to Shakespeare Oxford Society Mail form and payment to: Shakespeare Oxford Society, PO Box 808, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598-0808 To pay by credit card, register online at: http://www.goestores.com/catalog.aspx?Merchant=shakespeareoxfordsociety&DeptID=170579
For online hotel reservations, contact Angelica at Doubletree: 281-848-4001 or 1-800-222-TREE, [email protected], or reserve online at: http://doubletree.hi Iton. com/en/dt/grou ps/personalized/H 0 UAPDT-S H P-200911 05/i ndex.j html This form: http://shakespeare-oxford.com/wp-content/uploads/Conference_Registration_Form_2009.pdf