The Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter

Volume 46: No. 1 “Shakespeare led a life of allegory: his works are the comments on it.” – John Keats May 2010 Shakespeare and Much Ado About Authorship in Media

“The King of Hungary’s he Shakespeare Authorship Question incisive review of Shapiro’s book in the ‘Peace’” Thas reached a new level of legitimacy April 2010 edition of The Brooklyn Rail: upon the fresh release of a book devoted Critical Perspectives on Arts, Politics An Earlier Source for an Allusion in to the topic by English professor James and Culture. The reviewer is William S. Measure for Measure Shapiro, Contested Will: Who Wrote Niederkorn, a well-known commentator By Connie Beane Shakespeare? The major media has on the authorship question, and one of embraced the book, and the controversy, the most perceptive observers of its lucio by featuring interviews with Shapiro and growing importance. Niederkorn’s 5,000- If the Duke, with the other Dukes, come reviews of his book online, and in English word essay, “Absolute Will,” reveals the not to composition with the King of and American newspapers. Academics inconsistencies, circular reasoning, and Hungary, why then all the dukes fall upon the King. have long ignored, dismissed, and even ridicule of anti-Stratfordian scholars ridiculed those who doubted the Stratford that permeate Shapiro’s book, which has first gentleman Man as Shakespeare, but the public’s just been published by Simon & Shuster. Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King fascination with the controversy has put Niederkorn describes Alan Nelson’s of Hungary’s. them on the defensive. Shapiro, in his Monstrous Adversary as “one of the recent interview with The Wall Street most bilious biographies ever written,” – Measure for Measure (1.2.1-5) Journal (April 2, 2010), admitted his fears “riddled with errors . . . and an embar- about this surging public attention. He rassment to scholarship.” In recounting This minor bit of dialogue early in the first stated that Roland Emmerich’s upcom- the recent history of the authorship act of Measure for Measure has puzzled ing film portraying the Earl of Oxford question, Niederkorn also remarks that commentators for years. Scholars such as as Shakespeare, “will be a disaster for The Oxfordian, “the best American J.W. Lever gloss it as a topical reference: those of us who teach Shakespeare.” Yet academic journal covering the authorship “‘the King of Hungary’s peace’ quibbles he also stated that Shakespeare was a question, publishes papers by Stratford- on ‘hungry peace’, a topical pun when “court observer” due to his having “per- ians. By contrast, there is no tolerance English volunteers in Hungary were formed at court over 100 times probably for anti-Stratfordian scholarship at the serving against the Turks. Down-at-heels in the course of his career …” Although conferences and journals Stratfordians ex-soldiers were sometimes nicknamed Oxfordians would agree with the former control.” Niederkorn’s piece was chosen ‘Hungarians’. Cf. Wiv., 1. iii. 21” (Lever statement, the latter about the Stratford as the book review of the week by the 9). Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Man is a fantastic piece of guesswork. National Book Critics Circle. Wilson, in their edition of Measure, In his interview, Shapiro also revealed Perhaps the most notorious Shakes- connected the reference to a post-1604 the new defense strategy that academics peare-related book of the last decade, revision of the play: are being forced to adopt: the sonnets of Contested Will has already been reviewed Shakespeare, written in the first person, in Publishers Weekly and The Chronicle There is no mention of this King of Hungary are not autobiographical, nor are there of Higher Education, The Los Angeles elsewhere in the play, nor is there anything autobiographical sources or references Times, salon.com, The Economist, The in the plot to throw light on the passage anywhere in the Shakespeare canon. Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The London quoted. Only one thing is clear – that the He stated that “either you believe he’s Review of Books, The Guardian and The King of Hungary’s “peace” was something highly undesirable ... (Quiller-Couch, recycling bits and pieces of his life, or Independent and others. The book was also Wilson 104) you believe that he imagined them, and reviewed on the SOS’s website (SOS Online, I like to think that he had the greatest Archives, Dec. 2009). Oxfordian scholars Quiller-Couch and Wilson then proceed imagination of any writer in the language. Richard Whalen and Tom Hunter provide to link the reference to a peace treaty And I don’t want that belittled.” additional reviews in this issue on pp. 7 and Oxfordian scholars and enthusiasts, 12. It appears that the Anti-Anti-Stratfordian (cont’d on p. 14) as well as other anti-Stratfordians, were movement is “at last gasp,” to quote Oxford’s also heartened by a clear-sighted and phrase in Cymbeline (1.5.53). page  May 2010 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter

Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter Peter Moore’s Research in New Edition Published quarterly by the Shakespeare Oxford Society erman publisher Verlag Laugwitz has to German audiences. “Peter’s method is P.O. Box 808 Gjust issued The Lame Storyteller, Poor like Lessing’s: disassembling the false Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 and Despised, the collected Shakespeare constructions of established authorities and ISSN 1525-6863 papers of literary historian and Oxfordian trying to gain new ideas from his critical Peter Moore (1949-2007). This collec- work by merging objective historical editors: tion contains nearly thirty articles that analysis with a keen literary sensibility,” Katherine Chiljan appeared in peer-reviewed journals in added Dr. Laugwitz. Ramon Jiménez the U.S., England, Holland and France Editor Gary Goldstein described the publications committee: from 1993 to 2006. The volume was new Moore publication. “The first half of Matthew Cossolotto, Chair edited by Gary Goldstein and Dr. Uwe the book focuses on the Sonnets, Hamlet, Brian Bechtold Laugwitz. Moore’s research covers the King Lear, Macbeth and Othello; the second James Boyd following topics: half investigates the chronology of the plays Katherine Chiljan and the controversial authorship issue of the Frank Davis • The Shakespeare plays were written from Shakespeare canon, with Moore deconstruct- John Hamill, ex officio 1585 to 1604 and not 1590 to 1613, as Ramon Jiménez commonly supposed ing the traditional case of Shakespeare from Richard Joyrich • The Rival Poet of the Sonnets was the Stratford, then laying out new evidence that James Sherwood Earl of Essex and the Fair Youth was the Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote Richard Smiley, SOS Webmaster Earl of Southampton the plays.” “What makes Peter Moore’s • Shakespeare’s share of Two Noble Kinsmen work of lasting value to scholars, theater Tel: (914) 962-1717 was written the last year of Elizabeth’s life professionals and the general public,” Fax: (914) 245-9713 – and ended with her death said Goldstein, “is his ability to delineate Email: [email protected] • The dramatist attacked in Ben Jonson’s www.shakespeare-oxford.com Shakespeare’s original intent in his most “On Poet Ape” was Thomas Dekker and important works.” A lieutenant colonel in shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress. not Shakespeare the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, com • Shakespeare used the Bible’s two-witness All contents copyright © 2010 rule involving murder in designing Hamlet’s Moore became a legislative aide to U.S. Shakespeare Oxford Society. inner dynamic Senator John East from North Carolina, The Newsletter welcomes research articles, • Shakespeare adapted the Earl of Surrey’s an official in the Georgia State Department book reviews, letters and news items. Psalm 8 as well as Piers Plowman in writing of Education, and a director at a national Contributions should be reasonably Hamlet’s soliloquies non-profit organization dedicated to dealing concise and, when appropriate, validated • Shakespeare set Christian and pagan with troubled youth. by peer review. Assignment of copyright philosophies against each other in King Dr. Uwe Laugwitz publishes books is required for publication. The views of Lear and mediated the debate through the focusing on Shakespeare and the Eliza- contributors do not necessarily reflect those concept of nature bethan period. Since 1997, Laugwitz has of the Shakespeare Oxford Society as a • Shakespeare used ancient and modern co-published with Robert Detobel the literary and educational organization. notions of time and Epicureanism in annual, Neues Shake-speare Journal, in devising Macbeth’s structure Layout and Printing by St. Martin de both German and English. Gary Goldstein Porres Lay Dominicans, “Peter became one of the most brilliant was former editor and publisher of The New Hope, Kentucky scholars of the Elizabethan period late Elizabethan Review, a peer-reviewed in life,” noted Dr. Laugwitz. “He was history journal and currently is the board of trustees not an academic – he did not receive a managing editor of Brief Chronicles: The John Hamill, President doctorate, nor did he teach Shakespeare. Inter-Disciplinary Journal of the Shakes- Richard Joyrich, 1st VP What is special about his insights into peare Fellowship (www. briefchronicles. Matthew Cossolotto, 2nd VP Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Age is com). The Lame Storyteller is available Virginia Hyde, Secretary that they derive from a most intriguing throughout North America for $25 Susan Grimes Width, Treasurer background – military officer, legislative through at www.elizabethanreview.com Brian Bechtold aide, and education official, with degrees or by email: garygoldstein1@bellsouth. James Boyd in engineering and economics (Univ. of net); it is also available from the SOS for Joan Leon Maryland). I would compare his contribu- $25 plus $4.95 shipping (P.O. Box 808, Michael Pisapia tions in the field of Shakespeare studies to Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, 914-962- James Sherwood that of Lessing’s.” Dr. Laugwitz referred 1717, or [email protected]). The Richard Smiley to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the 18th book is available in Europe for 25 Euros lifetime honorary trustee century German philosopher, critic and through the publisher at www.laugwitz. Charles Boyle dramatist who championed Shakespeare de, or email: [email protected]. Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter May 2010 page 

Searching for Shakespeare’s Earliest Published Works By Paul H. Altrocchi, MD

In the very May-morn of his youth, the plodding, pedantic, stupor-inducing Shaksper was not even born in 1562 when Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises . . . Arthur Golding, but only by the poetic Romeus and Juliet was published, and he Henry V (1.2.120) genius of Shakespeare (Altrocchi 2005). was only one year old in 1565 and three n recent years, some non-Stratfordian Everything about this beautiful poetic years old in 1567 when the two parts Ischolars have asserted that Shakespeare piece, including its captivating verbal of Metamorphoses were printed. Since began composing poetry and translating music, cadence and unique use of words both of these works are semantically and classical works at a very early age. There is Shakespearean. Other Oxfordians had stylistically Shakespearean, shouldn’t this are good reasons for some of these asser- previously arrived at the same opinion. eliminate once and for all the Stratford tions, but not for all of them. Similarly, Hank Whittemore, for example, left little businessman from Shakespeare author- nearly all orthodox Shakespeare scholars room for doubt in 1996 when he stated ship consideration? Stratfordians remain believe that because it has been shown that that “Arthur Golding could not, would placidly impervious to the endless barrage Arthur Brooke was a real person, and that not, and did not translate Ovid’s tales,” of Oxfordian near-smoking guns year the name “Ar. Br.” appeared on the title concluding that Golding “was in every after year. As Charles Dickens wrote in page of Tragicall Historye of Romeus and way incapable of it” (Whittemore 1). Dombey and Son in 1848: “Habit!” says Juliet, then Brooke must have been the The “Golding translation” of Ovid, an I, “I was deaf, dumb, blind and paralytic author of that work. This is not true at all. extremely innovative work modeled after to a million things from habit.” In a previous article in The Shakespeare Ovid, was published in two installments: True geniuses tend to display their Oxford Newsletter, I demonstrated that the first four books in 1565 and the entire extraordinary gift early in life, during Arthur Brooke’s only definite published fifteen books in 1567. The poet not only childhood or adolescence. We don’t know work was a 1563 translation from the metamorphosed 12,000 of Ovid’s lines into what Shaksper of Stratford was doing as a French of The Agreement of Sondry inspired poetry with remarkably novel, child. If he attended grammar school, there Places of Scripture (Altrocchi 2007). The fanciful, and racy word craftsmanship, is no record of it because the records for translation style was literal, tedious and transforming Ovid’s Latin into rhyming the years in question have disappeared. boring, without an iota of creative flair English, but also added 2,500 new lines As an adolescent, he was a butcher’s that – based upon linguistic analytical and invented dozens of new words. Arthur apprentice, and probably illiterate. The guidelines – rules him out as the author Golding simply did not have the innate purpose of this semantic analysis is not to of Tragicall Historye, published in 1562. gifts to accomplish this creative work. prove that Edward de Vere is Shakespeare, Tragicall Historye showed evidence of He wrote only one poem in his life and but to determine if the Shakespeare canon unique talent, imagination, power, rhythm, the quality was inferior. can be broadened to include any other choice of words, and word-combinations Golding never would have allowed an early publications. highly suggestive of a young Shakespeare. author unknown to him to use his name on This explains why an adult Shakespeare the translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Thomas Phaer’s Translation of Virgil’s was able to use so much material from He would, however, have permitted his Aeneid favorite nephew, Edward de Vere, to do Tragicall Historye in his play, Romeo Based upon the similarity of the so. Golding and De Vere were both living and Juliet, without being labeled a Elizabethan pronunciation of Edward at Cecil House during the period 1563 plagiarist (Ogburn 389-390). Tragicall de Vere’s last name, “Vair,” and Thomas to 1565, the time when the translation Historye represents the earliest known Phaer, who was listed as the translator work on Metamorphoses was beginning major published work of Shakespeare. of the Aeneid, professors of Linguistics (Nelson 43). De Vere was fifteen and Although there is no definite proof, I Michael Brame and Galina Popova have seventeen when the two parts of Ovid’s believe that Edward de Vere was the author asserted that Edward de Vere’s first Metamorphoses were published. Based of Tragicall Historye, written when he published work was his translation of upon my previous semantic analysis, was eleven years old and published when Virgil’s Aeneid in 1558. They based their the translator of Ovid was William he was twelve. conclusion on a professorial hunch, not on Shakespeare. Circumstantial evidence their techniques of semantic fingerprint suggests that the gifted poet translator Who Was the True Translator of Ovid’s analysis. They state: “Indeed, by age of Ovid was Edward de Vere. Metamorphoses? eight de Vere had translated seven books We can say with complete confidence, of Virgil’s Aeneid, which were published In 2005, I showed by semantic analy- however, that Shaksper of Stratford-on- in 1558 under the Phaer pseudonym. He sis that the uniquely brilliant “Golding Avon was not involved in either the original adopted this pseudonym both as a tribute translation” of Ovid’s Metamorphoses composition of Tragicall Historye or the to the real-life Thomas Phaer, who died could not possibly have been created by enchantingly creative resculpting of Ovid. page  May 2010 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter in 1560, and as a play on his own family Below is an example of Phaer’s translation verse heroical certain books of Virgil’s name Vere . . .” (Brame 463-4) of Virgil’s Latin (Book 1, lines 18-22): Aeneidos” (Bower 6). Does Phaer’s verse If true, this would be De Vere-Shake- sound at all like William Shakespeare, as Virgil: speare’s earliest known work. Let’s look Urbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere coloni, exemplified either in Tragicall Historye at the evidence for Brame and Popova’s Karthago, Italiam contra Tiberinaque or in the translation of Ovid’s Metamor- conclusion. Thomas Phaer (1510-1560) longe phoses? Not in the least. Phaer exhibits graduated from Oxford and studied law ostia, dives opum studiisque asperrima meager verbal fluency, little inventive at Lincoln’s Inn, subsequently using his belli; imagination, awkward rhythm and rhyme, legal training as a member of Parliament quam Iuno fertur terris magis omnibus and not a trace of Shakespeare’s sparkling from Wales and as a justice of the peace, unam creativity, even in his childhood work, crown searcher, customs officer, and posthabita coluisse Samo. . . Tragicall Historye. solicitor. He later trained in medicine Phaer’s translation: and practiced as a rural family doctor Who Translated the Aeneid? in Wales for more than 20 years (Bower There was a town of ancient time Because the pronunciation of Phaer 1-4). His publications reflect the broad Carthage of old it hight Against Italia and Tyber’s mouth late is “Phair,” and that of Vere is “Vair,” range of his intellectual interests: loose at seas aright. does not mean that Thomas Phaer is a 1532: Of the Nature of Writs, a legal Both rich in wealth and sharp in war, the pen name of Edward de Vere. There is no book translated from Latin people it held of Tyre stylistic evidence that such is the case. 1543: A New Book of Precedents, This town above all towns to raise was In fact, the evidence in favor of Thomas a compendium of important legal deci- Juno’s most desire, Phaer himself translating Virgil’s Aeneid sions Forsook her seat at Samos isle and here is substantial: 1544: a volume containing four her arms she set • Phaer kept meticulous records of the dates Her chair, and here the minds to make (if medical works: A translation from the and duration of his Aeneid translating. For all gods do not let). French of Jehan Goerot’s medical text, instance, he began the translation on May The Regiment of Life; an original medical Here is an example from Book 3, lines 9, 1555, each book taking an average of 20 essay entitled A Declaration of the Veins; 19-24, just giving Phaer’s translation: days to translate (Bower 5). an article on the plague, A Goodly Brief • He described the translation as “my Treatise of the Pestilence, written in English There lieth a land far aloof at sea, where pastime in all my vacations”(Bower 5). for common citizens; and The Book of Mars is lord, and where • Phaer published the first seven books The largy fields and fertile soil men Children, a book on medical problems in in 1558. His literary executor, William Thracis called, do care. Wightman, published Phaer’s translation of infants and children. The Book of Chil- Sometime Lycurgus fierce therein did dren was so popular that Phaer has been the first nine books after Phaer’s death in reign and empire hold. 1560, with this introduction: “The Nine First called “The Father of English Pediatrics” An ancient stay to Troy, and like in faith Books of the Eneidos of Virgil converted (Ruhrah 147). Phaer specifically wrote and friendship old into English verse by Thomas Phaer, Doctor the book for laymen, not in Latin, but in While fortune was. To that they went, of Phisike, with so much of the tenth Book as simple English for families with children, and on the crooked shore since his death could be found in unperfect demystifying and summarizing the best Foundations first of walls they laid with papers at his house in Kilgarran forest in known treatments for common childhood designs luck full fore. Penbrokshire.” (Bower 8) afflictions such as respiratory infections, • According to a recent biographer, “Phaer skin disease, epilepsy, nightmares and To his credit, Phaer translated the Aeneid requested that the second edition of his “pyssing in the bed.” loosely, using rhyming poetry to capture Eneidos be dedicated to the rising Protestant 1544: A rhymed poetic preface to the spirit of Virgil’s creativity. This is politician Sir Nicholas Bacon, Elizabeth’s Peter Betham’s translation of Jacopo de exactly what a young Shakespeare did Lord Keeper of the Great Seal.” Wightman followed his wishes, explaining Phaer’s Porcia’s The Precepts of War. in his marvelously original translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. What is the personal request: “Declaring moreover 1558: A translation in rhyming unto me that his very mind and purpose English of the first seven books of the quality of Phaer’s translation? Mediocre at best, with the wording and rhythm of was not only to print the former part (of Aeneid, in non-rhyming Latin. the translation) again for reformation of many lines sacrificed to a compelling 1559: A 34-verse poem entitled some faults overslipped upon the first “How Owen Glendour seduced by false need to rhyme. Phaer’s contemporaries, impression, but also having finished the prophesies took upon him to be Prince of however, thought otherwise, e.g. George same, to dedicate the whole work unto Wales,” a contribution to the first English Puttenham in his The Arte of English your Lordship, whom he took for a special edition of The Mirror for Magistrates – a Poetry (1589): “In Queen Mary’s time Patron and friendly favorer both of him and compendium of stories about the tragic flourished above any other, Doctor Phaer, his doings.”(Bower 9) result of greed and lack of wisdom in one that was well learned and (who) • Phaer seriously injured his right hand, probably in a fall from a horse, on April public figures. excellently well translated into English Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter May 2010 page 

3, 1560 after completing the translation Florentine politics but achieved his fame Trogus Pompeius of books eight and nine. He died from through writing. His early works included In 1564 Arthur Golding published, complications of the fall in August 1560. translations from Greek into elegant Latin for the first time in English: According to Wightman, Phaer continued of books by Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, to translate the tenth book up until the day and Demosthenes. Bruni did not translate The abridgment of the History of Trogius before he died, writing the final translated literally, but used his own creativity to Pompeius, gathered & written in the Latin lines with his left hand, subsequently transmit the flavor and meaning of the tongue by the famous historiographer included in Thomas Twyne’s 1583 Justine, and translated into English by completion of Phaer’s work on the Aeneid work, a stylistic method never attempted by Arthur Golding. In his dedication Arthur Golding: a work containing briefly (Bower 9). great plenty of most delectable histories to William Cecil, Golding displays his Surely these documented personal connec- and notable examples, worthy not only to tions to the work confirm Thomas Phaer typical long-sentenced, grammatically be read, but also to be embraced & followed as translator of the Aeneid, with no valid awkward verbosity: by all men. Dedicated to the right Honorable evidence historically or linguistically that And therefore although the want of fine Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxinforde, Lord either a young Shakespeare or Edward de penning and eloquent indicting of the Great Chamberlain of England, Viscount Vere was the translator. history in our language, enforce me to Bulbeck, etc. London, 1564, Thomas confess it unworthy to trouble your honor Marsh, printer. being otherwise busied in most weighty Was Shakespeare Responsible for other affairs of the Realm: yet notwithstanding Trogus Pompeius was a Roman historian Translations Attributed to Golding? partly in consultation of my duty, but more who lived in the era of Emperor Caesar We took Ovid’s Metamorphoses away upon confidence of your clemency, I have Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE), as did the from Arthur Golding on stylistic grounds taken boldness to dedicate the same unto writers Virgil, Horace and Ovid. Pompeius’ you: so much the rather, inasmuch as the alone, despite his name on the title page. work was a 44-book history of Greece from work entreateth of serious and weighty De Vere was already fluent in Latin when early Athens and its interaction with the matters. Persian Empire to its conquest by Rome. he came to Cecil House and there is no This typical Golding wordiness shows evidence that Arthur Golding was ever None of the original books survives, but not a hint of Shakespeare’s elegant, the work lived on in the form of Justin’s De Vere’s tutor in Latin or that they fluid and precise style. Golding reveals ever collaborated on a Latin translation famous Abridgment of Trogus Pompeius, his ponderous style in the long opening which epitomized the 44 books. We know project. Let’s examine, however, three sentence of his sixteen-page “Epistle to other translations, supposedly by Arthur almost nothing about Marcus Juntianius the Reader”: Justinus, but his Latin style suggests Golding, to see if they might be the work Forasmuch as this work of Leonard Aretine that he lived a considerable time after of an adolescent Shakespeare: Leonard entreateth of the repulsing of the Goths out Aretine’s History of Rome vs. the Goths of Italy by the Captains of the Emperor of the Augustan age. His abridgment is (1563); Justin’s abridgment of Trogus Constantinople, touching lightly by the first mentioned in the early 400s, so he Pompeius’ History of Greece (1564); Julius way the cause of their arrival in the same is thought to have lived in the third or Caesar’s The Gallic War (1565). country, it seemeth expedient to make fourth century CE. further rehearsal of the cause of their first The very fact that Golding dedicates Leonard Aretine’s History of Rome entrance within the bounds of the Roman the work to Edward de Vere in highly Against the Goths Empire, and of their success in the same commendatory terms suggests the validity through which which they grew so strong of Golding’s authorship. Presumably De The title page of this 1563 transla- in process of time . . . [the same sentence Vere would not dedicate his own work to tion reads: continues for seventeen more lines] himself, especially with such complimen- The translation of Bruni’s text is dryly tary wording. Even more important, the The history of Leonard Aretine, concerning verbatim without any creativity of style. the wars between the Imperials & the long, complicated sentences and pedestrian By contrast, at this very time, we believe Goths for the possession of Italy: a work tone confirm Golding as the translator a young Shakespeare was working on very pleasant & profitable. Translated out – because these stylistic hallmarks fol- of Latin into English by Arthur Golding. his immensely original, imaginative low Golding throughout his career as a Dedicated to Sir William Sicill, Knight, transmutation of the first four books of translator. Golding’s work is sterile and Metamorphoses Principal Secretary to the Queen’s Majesty, Ovid’s . While immersing wearisome without any Shakespearean and Master of her highness’ Court of Wards himself full-time in the creative genius literary features. Semantic analysis & Liveries. Finished at your house in the of Ovid, he would not have taken on emphatically rules out Shakespeare as Strand, the second of April, 1563. Arthur the simultaneous task of translating Golding. Rowland Hall, printer. the translator of Justin’s Abridgment of a mundane work like that of Leonard Trogus Pompeius. The authorial name, “Leonard Aretine,” Aretine. Semantically, the translation Golding’s translations were motivated De Bello Italico Adversus Gothos refers to Leonard the Aretine, whose of is at times by an almost fanatic Puritan real name was Leonardo Bruni (1369- vintage Arthur Golding, showing not a religiosity, including a million and a half 1444). Bruni played a prominent role in smidgen of Shakespearean panache. page  May 2010 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter words on Deuteronomy and the incredibly the Celtic and Germanic peoples and their re-creation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses long-winded sermons of John Calvin. cultures. Once again, Arthur Golding is establish with a high degree of certainty Golding’s dedicatory epistles are entirely identified by his tediously windy dedica- that Shakespeare was the author of these rewritten in the later editions of Trogus tion to William Cecil which contrasts long narrative poems rather than Arthur Pompeius in 1570 and 1578 and are mainly strikingly with Caesar’s crisp and concise Brooke and Arthur Golding. religious diatribes that once again suggest writing style. Here is the first sentence When one is translating prose, as in the Golding as the author. For instance, in of Golding’s dedication: works of Leonard Aretine, Trogus Pompeius, 1570 his Dedication stated: and Julius Caesar, it is more difficult to stamp Albeit (Right Honorable) that the difficulties one’s individuality on the work than if one First and foremost the obstinate and of this present work, considering my own stubborn-hearted Papists, the sworn want of experience not only in matters of is translating poetry. Yet the translator of enemies of God, the pestilent poison of war, but also in diverse other things whereof prose immediately makes the key choice mankind, and the very wellsprings of this history entreateth, did dissuade and in of whether to transpose the work word-for- all error, hypocrisy, and ungraciousness, manner discourage me from enterprising word, or to rise above the literal meaning (who, while they bear sway be more cruel the translation thereof yet notwithstanding and portray the intent and charm of the than bears, wolves, and tigers. . .and at all forasmuch as I perceived it to be a work, for original author’s words. Literal translators times more mischievous than the Devil the pleasure and profitableness thereof much like Golding, although performing a useful himself) . . . etc. desired of many, and that such of my simple service by making ancient works available travails, as I have heretofore bestowed in like in modern tongues, too often betray the William Shakespeare was clearly familiar matters, have been well accepted at your original author’s uniqueness, thus fulfilling with Justin’s Abridgement in Latin or the hand, as well boldened by your favorable translation by Arthur Golding. As Charles encouragement, as also remembering that the Italian caveat: “Traduttore, tradittore” Wisner Barrell pointed out in 1940, there earnest endeavor overcometh all things: I – the translator is a traitor. are at least ten citations in Shakespeare’s went in hand therewith. Arthur Golding and Shakespeare were at opposite ends of the translating and plays derived from Justin (20). For Golding’s verbosity similarly tries his instance, in Henry VI-Part 1 (2.3.3) literary spectrum, Golding the prototype readers’ patience in his Preface. Even literal translator and Shakespeare the Shakespeare uses Pompeius’ reference Golding, however, could not spoil Caesar’s to Tomyris as Queen of the Scythians, marvelously imaginative, flavor-catching lean, clear writing style, as in the begin- portrayer of the original author’s creativ- whereas all Greek historians referred to ning of Book 1, so familiar to students Tomyris as Queen of the Massagetae: ity, beautifully exemplified in his lyric of Latin, beginning with Gallia est omnis transformation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, countess of auverge divisa in partes tres: which that has stood the test of four The plot is laid; if all things fall out right, All Gaul is divided into three parts, of the centuries as the finest translation of Ovid I shall be as famous by this exploit which one is inhabited by the Belgies, ever done. Because of their mundane, As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus’ death. another by the Aquitanes, and the third by colorless, dreary translational styles, I them who in their tongue are called Celts, Caesar’s De Bello Gallico – The Gallic say with confidence that the three works and in ours Gauls. War published under Arthur Golding’s name There is nothing Shakespearean about and analyzed here were, in truth, works The Gallic In 1565 a translation of the Dedicatory Epistle, the Preface to of Golding and not Shakespeare. Just as War by Julius Caesar, a superb general the Reader, or the translation of De Lloyd Bentsen told Dan Quayle, “You’re and succinct writer, was published with Bello Gallico. The translator also tells no Jack Kennedy,” so I say to Thomas the title page reading: us that he, Golding, was writing from Phaer, “You’re no Shakespeare.” To The eight books of Caius Julius Caesar Powles Belchamp, which was his primary Phaer’s credit, however, his broad range containing his martial exploits in the Realm residence in Essex. of intellectual interests made significant of Gallia and the countries bordering upon contributions to the fields of law and the same, translated out of Latin into Conclusions medicine and, in his poetic translation of English by Arthur Golding, Gent. Dedicated the Aeneid, he deserves credit for trying to the right honorable Sir William Cecill In a work of translation, the epistle hard to catch the original tang of Virgil’s knight. . . At Powles Belchamp the 12th of dedication and preface to the Reader Latin verses. Phaer’s own limited poetic of October, Anno, 1565, London. William – both representing original writing by the abilities, unfortunately, were not up to Seres, printer. translator – yield solid linguistic evidence the task, as he himself admitted. The first seven books were brilliantly of his identity. Semantic experts all agree By careful analysis of ample evidence written by Caesar, the eighth by Aulus that writing style characterizes a given from Phaer himself and from his contem- Hirtius, Caesar’s long-time aide. Caesar author. The brilliant, albeit immature, poraries, one can confidently conclude recounts not only his remarkable military Shakespearean creativity displayed in that Thomas Phaer was the 1558 translator achievements in adding a huge territory the original poetry of Tragicall Historye of the Aeneid. No evidence suggests that of Romeus and Juliet and in the poetic to the Roman Empire, but also describes (cont’d on p. 15) Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter May 2010 page 

Book Review Stratfordian Professor Takes Authorship Question Seriously By Richard F. Whalen

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? be able to tease out what they need to defend finally disclosed Wilmot’s story with by James Shapiro Will Shakspere and shoot down Oxford. two lectures dated 1805. When Shapiro Simon and Schuster, 2010 Shapiro cleverly provides ammunition here examined the manuscript lectures, he and there for pot shots, although nothing found anachronisms, leading him to or the first time, a leading Shakespeare like an artillery barrage. The discerning suggest that they were a mid-twentieth Festablishment professor, James Sha- general reader, for whom this book is century forgery by a Baconian, probably piro of Columbia University, has given intended, should be able to see through attempting to counter the claims for serious consideration to the controversy this tactic. To answer his question – why Oxford. What Shapiro does not say in his over Shakespeare’s identity in a book- so many eminent doubters? – Shapiro text is that Daniel Wright of Concordia length analysis – a precedent that may argues that from the beginning the skeptics University came to this conclusion seven help make the authorship issue a legitimate about Shakspere as Shakespeare were years ago after John Rollett of the De subject for more research and discussion influenced by their predispositions – that Vere Society told him about his own in academia, even though Shapiro remains is, their unspoken, underlying assumptions suspicions. Professor Wright reported a Stratfordian. and their worldviews. Most of his book on his investigations at a conference at Shapiro’s Contested Will: Who Wrote describes the skeptics’ predispositions Concordia, and a news article on his talk Shakespeare? is a history of the authorship – and those of Oxfordians – based to was published in the Summer 2003 issue controversy, from Delia Bacon in the a great extent on new primary-source of Shakespeare Matters. Shapiro mentions 1850s to DoubtAboutWill.org in 2007. research. Another major argument of his the article in his bibliographic essay. He recognizes that the seventeenth Earl book is that Elizabethan and Jacobean Also left unsaid by Shapiro, but subtly of Oxford is by far the most impressive writers, including Shakespeare, relied implied, is that although Stratfordians challenger and that his backers have entirely on their imagination and were would commit many frauds and forgeries, achieved considerable success in recent not autobiographical. This is a difficult the first forgery was anti-Stratfordian; decades. His final word is that a choice assertion to support given the lack of and that he, Shapiro, has brought it to must be made, a stark and consequential biographical information about nearly all the attention of the general public. Then choice. the writers of the period, and it’s probably follow the book’s four chapters, entitled The book’s cover will dismay com- not true, as even some Stratfordian scholars simply “Shakespeare,” “Bacon,” “Oxford,” mitted Stratfordians. It shows the Stratford have found. Oddly, Shapiro undercuts his and “Shakespeare” redux, plus an epilogue monument depicting a writer with pen, own argument against autobiography in and a lengthy bibliographic essay. paper and a pillow; but his head is cut Shakespeare by saying that Will Shakspere True to Shapiro’s intention, the off by the author’s name and the book’s probably did draw on his life experience first “Shakespeare” chapter is not about title, including the subtitle, Who Wrote but that not enough is known about it evidence for Shakspere as the dramatist. It Shakespeare? Indeed, that is the ques- to identify how and where. Oxfordians is largely about the deification of Shakes- tion. Shapiro, however, states at the can point to the extensive, documented peare, the drive to find out more about outset that he aims to answer a different record of Oxford’s life, which Shapiro Shakspere and the forgeries of William question: Why have so many eminent mostly ignores. He mentions just a few Henry Ireland and John Payne Collier, who people doubted that Will Shakspere of correspondences between Oxford’s life and concocted new “evidence” for Shakspere Stratford was the author and why have Shakespeare’s works and then dismisses as the poet-dramatist. Ireland’s forger- they argued for someone else, such as them as unconvincing. He tries to ignore the ies were exposed by Edmond Malone, Oxford? In so doing, Shapiro declines core debate about who wrote Shakespeare, the leading Shakespeare scholar of the to enter the debate over the evidence for but in the end he can’t escape it. eighteenth century. But Malone comes Shakspere or for Oxford in any depth of Shapiro’s prologue opens dramatically under fire for trying to find Shakspere’s detail. As a result, the general reader is with what he suggests is an elaborate autobiography in the plays, thus opening left with the impression that the ques- anti-Stratfordian forgery – the story of the door, says Shapiro, for anyone to use an tion of Shakespeare’s identity may well James Wilmot of Warwickshire. Wilmot author’s fiction as a source for biography be legitimate, despite efforts by many reportedly searched circa 1785 in and and to indulge in excessive speculations Stratfordians to dismiss it. That a scholar around Stratford for documents about about Shakspere’s biography. Shapiro is of Shapiro’s standing in the Shakespeare Shakspere as the poet-dramatist, found hard on Malone, a revered Shakespeare establishment should take this approach none, and decided that Shakespeare was scholar. Shapiro then suggests that a bodes well for Oxfordians. Sir Francis Bacon. Wilmot told a friend, convergence of trends in scholarship ac- Die-hard Stratfordians, of course, will but swore him to secrecy. The friend celerated skepticism about Shakspere as page  May 2010 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter

Shakespeare. This convergence included Bacon the essayist and Shakespeare the unconscious than about whether Oxford Malone’s autobiographical speculations, poet-dramatist. wrote Hamlet. His analysis of Freud is research into Shakspere’s life that was Although Shapiro uses the predisposi- fascinating, but his conclusion about what yielding only business records, and grow- tions of the early skeptics to disparage he describes as Freud’s conflicted obses- ing doubts about his role in writing all of their heretical skepticism, he is hardly sion about Oxford as Shakespeare seems the plays in the canon, combined with the in a position to do so. As a career Strat- facile. Shapiro admires Looney’s book, emergence of doubts about Homer as a fordian, he is naturally predisposed to “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de person and about the Bible as a reliable believe in Shakspere of Stratford as the Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, and did source for the life of Jesus. Shapiro’s thesis poet-dramatist. He has a doctorate in a great deal of research on his background. is an impressive merging and melding of Shakespeare studies from the University He says Looney was heavily influenced multiple literary-cultural trends. of Chicago. He has taught Shakespeare by his unusual worldview. Looney was The “Bacon” chapter has much more for twenty-five years at Columbia, and a follower of Auguste Comte’s Positivist information on Delia Bacon, an American, he has published two earlier books about philosophy. In England this philosophy than on Sir Francis Bacon, the authorship Shakespeare. One manifestation of his became a religion that venerated Shakes- candidate. Shapiro describes at length and Stratfordian predisposition is that while peare. Shapiro tells at some length how with new, primary-source information researching and writing his book, he Looney aspired to become a Positivist describing how Delia Bacon’s background declined to consult or communicate with Priest of Humanity. The new information and romantic difficulties influenced her Oxfordians. that Shapiro found supported his view conviction that Shakespeare could not The “Oxford” chapter covers eighty- that Looney was feudalistic, reactionary, have been written by the Stratford man. seven years of the Oxfordian movement anti-democratic and authoritarian. Shapiro She was a brilliant, eloquent lecturer damns Looney with faint praise by noting on Shakespeare’s works. Her book on that Looney was not a Nazi-sympathizer the works published in 1857 was the “To counter the Anti- despite some of his letters. first to contend that the plays must have Stratfordian point that In effect, Shapiro’s critique of the been written by aristocrats, a shockingly no one noticed when early skeptics, Baconians, and Oxford- revolutionary idea at a time of intense ians with Looney, in particular, for their Bardolatry. Bacon was uncompromising, Shakspere, supposedly worldviews and predispositions amounts and to her contemporaries she appeared the famous poet-dra- to an ad hominem argument, the argument to be obsessed. She spent the last years matist, died in 1616 of last resort: i.e., if you don’t like the of her life in a mental institution. Most message, attack the messenger. Shapiro’s Stratfordians ridicule Delia Bacon, but … [Shapiro] cites the specific criticisms of Looney are that Shapiro is quite sympathetic, depicting her publication in 1619 of he assumed that the Shakespeare plays as an articulate, outspoken woman – an the Pavier Quartos …” were not written for money and were eccentric in a man’s world of literature autobiographical. At the same time, he studies and public lecturing who argued criticizes his fellow Stratfordians for mak- radical ideas about Shakespeare. It’s from J. Thomas Looney’s book in 1920 ing fun of Looney’s name and dismissing possible that she was unfairly stigmatized identifying Oxford as Shakespeare to the Looney’s “Shakespeare” Identified that by the nineteenth century, catch-all label DoubtAboutWill. org web site launched Shapiro praises as a formidable book and of female hysteria. in 2007. Shapiro tries to score against a compelling tour de force. The “Bacon” chapter continues with Oxford, but an historical narrative is not Shapiro concludes that Oxford quickly Mark Twain, who persuaded himself that conducive to arguing points of evidence. took over from Bacon and other con- all fiction, especially his own, is auto- In any case, in this chapter Shapiro is tenders as the leading candidate for a biographical (Shapiro disagrees) and got not as harsh and dismissive as his more number of reasons. The autobiographical drawn into the arcane world of ciphering strident colleagues, and he describes the correspondences in the plays were more (which Shapiro debunks). Henry James’s success of the Oxfordian movement with persuasive. Contemporaries praised ambiguous pondering on the authorship a fair amount of admiration. Oxford, an aristocrat, for his poetry and issue was as much about his own genius The chapter opens with Sigmund his plays; and his early writings could and legacy as about Shakespeare’s and Freud’s idea that Hamlet must reflect be compared to Shakespeare’s. Looney’s is, thus, unreliable, according to Shapiro. aspects of the dramatist’s life. Shapiro book was heartfelt and convincing, and Sir Francis Bacon, the most popular explores Looney’s influence on Freud, his followers were committed. Today’s candidate in the late nineteenth and early concluding that Freud, unconventional in Oxfordians could certainly agree with twentieth centuries, is dismissed in a few his views and a strong supporter of Oxford that assessment. paragraphs about the failure of Ignatius as the poet-dramatist, deceived himself and After a quick survey of many Oxford- Donnelly’s ciphers to gain followers, and revealed more about his concern to find ian supporters and scholars well known the disparity of writing styles between confirmation of his Oedipal theory of the to Oxfordians, Shapiro examines their Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter May 2010 page  predispositions and then their efforts to perhaps not fair since dead writers speak to U.S. Supreme Court as most important in find new ways to support Oxford. Like the living in their writings, and professors making the authorship issue legitimate. He the Baconians, he says, Oxfordians began like himself make a living interpreting mentions the PBS-TV Frontline programs, to find reasons to ascribe the writings of their writings from beyond the grave. He Charles Beauclerk’s lectures and TV many Elizabethans to Oxford, among might have added that spiritualism was a appearances, Roger Stritmatter’s PhD them Marlowe, Spenser, Gascoigne, very popular movement in the nineteenth dissertation on the markings in Oxford’s Montaigne, Thomas Nash, Anthony and early twentieth centuries that attracted Bible, and William Niederkorn’s major Munday, John Lyly, Robert Greene and prominent men and women and was at its articles in The New York Times. Shapiro Arthur Brooke. Shapiro calls this effort peak in the 1920s. says that much in Niederkorn’s articles reckless. Leading Oxfordian scholars of Shapiro cleverly describes the impres- promoted the Oxfordian proposition, but course are generally cautious, finding so sive success of the Oxfordian movement. the quotes he uses from Times articles far evidence possibly involving Brooke, Oxfordians in the early 1980s, he says, are factual and objective. His quarrel Greene, Nash and perhaps Lyly than for would never have believed the success they with Niederkorn’s articles is that they the other more famous writers. In any case would enjoy in 2010. He demonstrates gave the authorship controversy more it has little to do with the basic evidence this with an imaginary article in The prominence – but so will Shapiro’s own for Oxford as Shakespeare. Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter in 2010 book. After this generous report on the Shapiro then uses the so-called Lord that would have been beyond belief for success of the Oxfordian movement, the Admiral and Prince Tudor hypotheses to Oxfordians in the 1980s. Filling a full general reader may well conclude that discredit the case for Oxford. He notes that page in his book, the imaginary article there must be something to the case for Looney and Freud hated the Prince Tudor describes the Oxfordian successes: Oxford as Shakespeare theory, which suggested the third Earl of The last chapter, “Shakespeare,” (and • Universities offering advanced degrees in Southampton was the son of Oxford and authorship studies the Epilogue) retell familiar arguments for Queen Elizabeth. He adds that the Lord • supporters like Derek Jacobi, Mark Shakspere but in a curiously haphazard Admiral hypothesis that Oxford was the Rylance and others from the theater way, and significantly, they amount to son of a teenage Elizabeth and Thomas world Shapiro’s own imaginary biography of Seymour, the Lord Admiral, piles incest • books by independent scholars and Shakspere as the poet- dramatist. He says upon incest. In his prologue, Shapiro books for young adults from mainstream that book buyers, printers and playgoers had told how a nine-year-old asked him publishers in London would have known if Shakspere a classroom whether Shakespeare or • high school students competing to write was not Shakespeare and would have left someone else wrote Romeo and Juliet the best Oxfordian essay word about it. There is no agreement, he and how relieved he was not to have been • major articles in the Atlantic, Harper’s, says, among Oxfordians about how such and The New York Times and programs on asked about the Virgin Queen’s incestuous a far-fetched conspiracy to hide Oxford’s National Public Radio love life. Shapiro’s technique is the gentle • moot court debates before justices from the authorship, if there was one, would have jab rather than the harsh put-down. The highest courts in America and England worked. If Oxford wanted to hide his two hypotheses, Shapiro says, reveal • peer-reviewed Oxfordian journals authorship he should have left the plays the burning desire by Oxfordians to find • international conferences anonymous. The hyphen in “Shake-speare” a story about Oxford’s traumatic life • Oxfordian editions of the plays for teachers is no evidence for it being a pen name; it in the Shakespeare plays. Conjectured of Shakespeare; was a quirk of typesetting. conspiracies and cover-ups are inevitable, • impressive Wikipedia entries and Internet Shapiro doesn’t make many errors, but he notes, although adding that Oxfordians web sites that are more professional and one involves the spelling of the dramatist’s are divided on this issue. impressive than Stratfordian sites name. He gives “Shakspere” as one of the Shapiro is very selective in his choice • and multiple discussion groups on the spellings on early editions the plays to try Internet. of early Oxfordian researchers and writers to show no difference from the various for consideration. He says little or nothing All this, says Shapiro, without any new spellings of Shakspere of Stratford. He’s about the exhaustively researched books documentary evidence. referring to Love’s Labor’s Lost, but on and articles of Eva Turner Clark, Dorothy He ends the “Oxfordian” chapter that quarto it’s spelled “Shakespere,” and Charlton Ogburn and Ruth Loyd Miller, with an admiring description of John the spelling on all the plays and poems, major works that find Oxford’s biography Shahan’s DoubtAboutWill.org web site except for the second “a” in this single in Shakespeare. But he devotes three that is deliberately anti-Stratfordian, not instance. Shapiro erroneously makes it pages to Percy Allen who used a medium Oxfordian. Shapiro’s “Oxford” chapter appear that “Shakspere” or a Stratford to get in touch with Shakspere, Bacon concludes with additional recognition of variant was the byline not only on this play and Oxford to confirm that Oxford was landmarks in his history of the Oxfordian but also on other plays, which is not true. Shakespeare and to suggest the location of societies and the success of the Oxfordian He also cites the “Shaxberd” spelling for manuscripts. Shapiro observes, however, movement since the 1980s. He cites the the playwright Shakespeare in the Revels that the Stratfordian mocking of Allen is moot court before three justices of the Account for 1604, but that was declared page 10 May 2010 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter a forgery by all the leading Shakespeare five late plays show stylometric signs that in his book on Sidney, autobiographical scholars when the notorious forger John Shakspere collaborated on them with other touches in fiction were an integral part Payne Collier published its “discovery.” It playwrights. Shapiro does not believe of Elizabethan culture. is almost certainly a forgery, although the that Oxford would have collaborated Shapiro’s position on autobiography Shakespeare establishment decided later with anyone. That’s probably true, but is also tellingly ambiguous. He rejects to accept it, probably because “Shaxberd” he offers only a grudging, half-hearted autobiography in Elizabethan-Jacobean is a variant of the Stratford spelling, thus dismissal of the Oxfordian response that fiction, including Shakespeare, but says tying the Shakespeare plays listed in the nothing in the allegedly post-1604 plays he has no doubt that Shakspere drew on 1604 Revels Account to Shakspere of proves they were written after Oxford’s his personal experiences. But because Stratford. death in 1604 and that other dramatists almost nothing is known about Elizabethan Whoever wrote the plays, Shapiro may have revised some plays after Oxford writers, anything that might have been continues, had to know the performers in died. In the end, Shapiro indulges in a evidence for Shakspere as Shakespeare the acting companies so he could write gentle jibe about would-be collaborators is missing. The second argument negates parts to their capabilities, and Shakspere squabbling over five of Oxford’s late the first. Or the first makes the second was an actor. Most persuasive for Shapiro Shakespeare plays at a garage sale after irrelevant. Shapiro leaves unsaid that a are the two different epilogues written for Oxford’s death. great deal is known about the documented Part Two of Henry IV, supposedly one In the “Epilogue,” Shapiro returns to life of Oxford, so that his biography can for the public theater and the other for a the argument that while fiction in recent be compared to passages in the plays to court performance. It’s not conceivable centuries has often been autobiographical, see if there are correspondences that add for Shapiro that Oxford, or anyone but the that was not the case for Elizabethan- up to evidence for his authorship. Oxford- commoner-actor Shakspere, could have Jacobean writers. As it happens, however, ian literature, of course, is replete with spoken the epilogue claiming authorship Stratfordian scholars have argued that such correspondences. Recent examples of the play before an audience at court. include Mark Anderson’s Shakespeare by Oxfordians would argue the reverse. “Shapiro asserts… Another Name and the Oxfordian editions Shapiro continues with more bits of of Macbeth and Othello. Shapiro argues evidence: the Stratfordian interpretation [Shakespeare’s] that Stratfordian autobiographical readings of Groatsworth of Wit, the praise for vocabulary was no of Shakespeare are speculative exercises Shakespeare (Shapiro’s Stratford man) greater than that of that only encourage Oxfordians to do by many contemporaries, Francis Meres’ even more speculation. As an example mention of both Oxford and Shakespeare other educated men of the latter, he uses Hank Whittemore’s as poets (powerful evidence for Shapiro), and women.” one-man performance at the Globe based the Parnassus plays, and Ben Jonson’s on Whittemore’s book, The Monument. mixed praise for Shakespeare in Timber. those writers did indeed draw on their life Shapiro praises it as a spellbinding The evidence in the First Folio, always experience, their times, and their reading. performance, enthusiastically received cited by Stratfordians, gets just a few Professor David Riggs, the biographer of by the audience. He adds, however, that descriptive paragraphs, without support- Ben Jonson, says that Jonson created his he left the theater disheartened by what ing argument or mention of the obvious works out of his life and that Volpone in he construed as a merging of the Prince ambiguities therein that Oxfordians note. particular is a self-portrait. Shakespeare Tudor conspiracy theory, spurious history, He briefly misreads Diana Price’s argu- editor Harry Levin of Harvard says Jonson and fiction as autobiography. ment that Shakspere left no paper trail, lampooned contemporaries and what he Shapiro generally does not distin- but devotes ten pages to the Blackfriars wrote drew on his observations of life guish clearly between two different ways theater, a long passage having little to do in London. In her biography of Jonson, of researching and writing biography. with the authorship debate. Marchette Chute says that many touches The first method, which is fundamental To counter the anti-Stratfordian point in Jonson’s plays are based on literal fact. to biographies of writers, is to take the that no one noticed when Shakspere, sup- The Shakespeare scholar Edward Berry documented facts of a writer’s biography posedly the famous poet-dramatist, died says that an autobiographical impulse and then determine how a writer, such as in 1616, Shapiro offers an argument that characterizes many writers of the Tudor Shakespeare, drew on his documented most readers should recognize as quite period, and, for example, Philip Sidney life experience and his times to write flimsy. He cites the publication in 1619 of identified himself and Penelope Rich in his plays. This might be called read- the Pavier quartos of several Shakespeare Astrophil and Stella. Not enough is known ing forwards from the writer’s known plays. But that’s three years later and the about many Shakespeare contemporaries, biography to the imaginative works. quartos did not eulogize the dramatist or but various commentators on Spenser The second, more dubious method is even note that he had died. He concludes and Marlowe also contend that their to discover in writer’s works supposed this chapter with five pages on recent lives are, or must be, reflected in their biographical details about his life and Stratfordian scholarship suggesting that writings. As Professor Berry concludes emotions that are not supported by his Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter May 2010 page 11 documented biography. This method has men and women. Playgoers in the Globe On balance, Shapiro’s book might been called reading backwards from the and other public theaters would have no be considered good news for Oxfordians, works to write biography. Fiction becomes trouble understanding the Shakespeare who could have expected much harsher a source for biography but a conjectural plays. Shakspere could imagine all the treatment by a scholar in the Shakespeare and unreliable source. roles in the plays; he didn’t need any life establishment. Shapiro shows a fair One of Shapiro’s main arguments experience. Creating literature is mystery. measure of appreciation for the Oxfordian against Oxfordians is that they look in Great writers have powerful imaginations. proposition, and he freely acknowledges the works, such as the Sonnets, to find Rapid fire and cursory, Shapiro’s summary Oxfordian successes. That alone is reason Oxford’s biography, but that’s not true. of the case for Shakspere comes across enough to welcome his book. In addition, Like all reputable biographers, Oxfordians as superficial and half-hearted. Even the the book’s title and cover deliver a strong take Oxford’s documented biography and general reader may have a hard time swal- message of legitimacy for the authorship then go to the Shakespeare plays and poems lowing his encapsulated conjectures and his question. to determine whether and how Oxford’s fervid emphasis on the all-encompassing Shapiro acknowledges that little is life experience and concerns are reflected power of a writer’s imagination. They known about Shakspere as Shakespeare. in them, evidence tending to confirm may wonder, too, at Shapiro’s objection He takes very seriously the notable people his authorship of them. Shapiro fails to to the frankly imaginary biographies of who became skeptical of Shakspere and distinguish this method of biography Shakspere as Shakespeare by Stephen supported Oxford. He acknowledges that from the method of reading backwards Greenblatt of Harvard and Rene Weis of the correspondences between Oxford’s from the works, that is, using fiction as University College London. He could life and Shakespeare’s works were found a source for biography. have included Jonathan Bate of Warwick persuasive. He does not resort to sarcasm, After ranging through a hundred and University. as have S. Schoenbaum and other hard- fifty years of the authorship controversy, Does it make any difference who line Stratfordians, and he deplores the Shapiro makes a rush for the finish line wrote the great plays and poems? To his imaginary biographies of Shakspere by in the final seven pages with more un- credit, Shapiro’s final words in his book Greenblatt and Weis. Shapiro observes supported, Stratfordian assertions. They are that it matters a lot, and that there is that the long-standing taboo against add to his own imaginary biography of a choice to be made. It matters how we authorship studies in most of academia Shakspere as Shakespeare. Authors, he imagine the Elizabethan-Jacobean times has not made the question go away, and says, can write fiction about things they and how they were different from our acknowledges that the case for Oxford has have not experienced; the Shakespeare own. Most important, it matters how we achieved some legitimacy in academia. plays did not require visits to Venice are predisposed to read the plays – as by a Oxford is the most successful candidate, or Verona. How did he do it? We don’t dramatist who needed no life experience to and the issue is attracting more people know. He may have owned or borrowed write the works of Shakespeare but could than ever before. The Internet has created books. He may have gleaned what he imagine it all, or as by a dramatist whose a level playing field for Oxford. needed by browsing in the bookstalls. life experience inspired, influenced and In sum, the very fact that that a tenured The theaters may have kept cheap copies enriched the works of his imagination professor of English and comparative of the classics for an actor-playwright to as he created great literature out of life. literature at Columbia University, a leading ransack when he was not rehearsing or Shapiro calls it a stark and consequential Shakespeare scholar, and the author of acting. (Will the general reader believe choice, in contrast to most Stratfordian two other books on Shakespeare, would all this conjectural biography?) scholars, who don’t want there to be a devote three or four years to researching It is nonsense, Shapiro asserts, that choice at all. and writing a book on the authorship only aristocrats had access to all those Granted, there is much for Oxfordians controversy will give greater prominence books that were sources for the plays. to critique and rebut, including material to the Shakespeare authorship issue. Shakspere’s knowledge of the world, omissions, unbalanced emphases, unsup- Shapiro’s book may persuade general including everything about Italy, could ported opinions, faulty judgments, the readers who love Shakespeare to look into have come from conversations with all sorts usual straw-man arguments, contradictory the authorship controversy and the case for of travelers. His knowledge of hawking, stances and some other clever rhetorical Oxford. It may inspire more professors of hunting and other aristocratic pursuits tactics. At times, his handling of evidence English literature and Renaissance history and the ways of monarchs and courtiers is so devious as to deftly conceal his er- to consider the authorship a legitimate could have come from his visits to royal rors of interpretation. Oxfordians would subject for research and study, and more palaces with the acting companies. His have preferred a book by a Shakespeare books like Shapiro’s Contested Will. education in the Stratford grammar school establishment professor that would was about equal to that of a university open the door even wider to scholarly Richard F. Whalen is the author of Shake- today and better in the classics than that discussion of the evidence for Oxford as speare: Who Was He? The Oxford Chal- of a typical classics major. His vocabulary Shakespeare, but Shapiro’s is a big step lenge to the Bard of Avon, and editor of The was no greater than that of other educated in that direction. Oxfordian Shakespeare Series. q page 12 May 2010 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter

Book Review Shapiro and Why Authorship Doubters Don’t Believe By Thomas Hunter, Ph.D.

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? in Alan Nelson’s monstrous biography dismiss Freud as just another Oxfordian by James Shapiro of Oxford. Shapiro conducts no substan- lunatic. Simon and Schuster, 2010 tive analysis of authorship issues. He For Shapiro, Delia Bacon was the provides no discussion of the merits. His first of the deviants, craved fame, and approach is to talk about the personalities was mad. Mark Twain was consumed by of authorship. His modus is to explain self-promotion; obsessed with his legacy; away authorship by explaining away its pre-occupied with twins, imposters, and proponents through the years. His book pen names; stole from Sir George Green- is one prolonged, detailed ad hominem wood; and believed in ciphers. Shapiro attack – pure and simple. Substantive is gentler with Helen Keller but also tars arguments concerning the true author her with the cipher brush. Henry James of Shakespeare’s works do not count in was only interested in creating powerful Shapiro’s world, since the mere fact of fiction and obsessed with his own genius questioning authorship is by definition and legacy. deviant behavior. Shapiro’s quest thus Shapiro dismisses J. Thomas Looney becomes the search for the motives that as being motivated by religious zealotry. drive such errant behavior. Other motivations found by Shapiro The central question for Shapiro among notable authorship supporters is: Why after two centuries, did so include overbearing egotism, profit mo- many people start questioning whether tive, and lunacy. He never finds simple Shakespeare wrote the plays? A similar interest in the truth as the motivation question on another issue might be: Why of any authorship proponent. Shapiro’s after so many centuries did so many message is: With motivations like these, people start questioning whether the sun how can authorship be taken seriously? revolved around the earth? The answer to As a result, the book never presents or both questions is: Because that is where deals with the long history of serious Let’s start with the good news about the evidence led. But like the Catholic Oxfordian scholarship, such as Dr. Earl James Shapiro’s Contested Will. The good Church and the Inquisition, Shapiro prefers Showerman’s work on Shakespeare’s news is that for the first time a Stratfordian to persecute the doubters rather than use of classic Greek sources, or Robert has become familiar in some detail with face the mounting evidence against his Detobel’s demonstrations of the role of Oxfordians and Oxfordian history. The understanding of the universe. Shapiro’s nobility in the creation of the plays, or bad news is the distortion, twisting, and approach raises a serious question about Dr. Noemi Magri’s brilliant work on misrepresentation Shapiro feels obliged Shapiro’s book and about Shapiro himself: Shakespeare’s knowledge of Venice and to employ in telling the Oxfordian story. What motivation drives Shapiro to find Italy, or Nina Green’s, Barbara Flues’ and Shapiro goes out of his way to protest the the reasons for questioning Shakespeare’s Robert Brazil’s work with original texts history of shabby, if not hostile, treatment authorship in those questioning author- and documentary sources and Green’s and of authorship proponents by the scholarly ship, and not in the evidence against the Brazil’s criticism of the shoddy work of community. As his narrative plays out, Stratfordian view? Alan Nelson and others presenting alleged however, it becomes clear that Shapiro’s We will return to this question after scholarship on Oxford. attitude toward authorship is as shabby we see how Shapiro attacks authorship Shapiro dismisses Roger Stritmatter’s and hostile as that of any of the traditional proponents. Notably, Shapiro focuses on pioneering dissertation by stating that scholars he criticizes. It doesn’t take Sigmund Freud, who famously held for his graduate committee was woefully long for the book’s surprisingly collegial Oxford but whom Oxfordians have never misinformed. He does not deal with initial façade to deteriorate into the more thought to be an example of one who the research by Stritmatter and Lynne familiar hard face of Stratfordian bias has done primary research and analysis Kositsky that demonstrates the problem and intolerance. on the authorship issue. Shapiro spends with the traditional dating of The Tempest From concept to conclusion, Contested parts of two chapters, 18 pages in all, – dating that has been used to support the Will is another perversion of scholarship on Freud and has a field day exposing weary, inaccurate argument that Oxford to make a point. We have seen this before supposed obsessions and fetishes that had died before several of the plays Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter May 2010 page 13 were written – an argument that Shapiro not one example that demonstrates that on himself. What is disturbing is that uses freely. Shapiro’s short history of Shaksper was the literary Shakespeare. Shapiro turns his focus on Malone into Blackfriars Theater omits Oxford’s Finally, one of Shapiro’s odd predis- accusing Eva Turner Clark of seeking to early involvement there in developing positions, appearing especially in his be the Edmond Malone of Oxfordians. the boys’ troupe as detailed by the work discussion of authorship proponents, is Shapiro presents no documentation of of Katherine Eggar. his concept of scholarship as competition, this objective for Clark. You can see To appear in Shapiro’s chapter about and not as a search for truth. This equates where this leads. Shapiro is so busy Oxfordians is to subject ones self and to the Stratfordian predisposition to think knocking Malone off his pedestal that he one’s work to innuendo, misrepresentation that Elizabethan playwrights – including applies to Clark another example of the and pejorative comment. Charles Wisner Shakespeare – were motivated not by the kind of baseless innuendo that populates Barrell’s work on the Ashbourne portrait creation of art but by competition, by his book. Shapiro gives no substantive recounted in his landmark January 1940 greed, and by putting butts in the seats. discussion of Clark’s research into dating Scientific American article is characterized Shapiro’s concept of scholarship tells the plays or of her groundbreaking work by Shapiro as “claims” later “exposed as us more about himself than about his on hidden allusions within the plays. He an embarrassing case of wishful thinking.” understanding of Shakespeare, both the just dismisses her as wanting to be the Shapiro accepts as fact the Folger’s lame man and the work. Oxfordian Malone. attempts to answer Barrell that have been After a couple hundred pages, how- The problem with Shapiro’s obsession refuted by Barbara Burris and reported ever, Shapiro’s method begins to catch on, with Malone and with autobiography as in the New York Times. and we begin to suspect that Shapiro is the basis of authorship inquiry is that The blithe representation of opinion really writing about Shapiro. We certainly his notion springs from a superficial as fact occurs hundreds of times in this would not want to adopt Shapiro’s methods, version of literature’s creative process book. One wonders, for one small but key that misrepresents the role played by example, what documentation Shapiro “His book is one the author’s experiences. It is a concept has to support his statement that the prolonged, detailed ad that suggests Shakespeare could have Stratford man was familiar with courtly visited castles or picked up a book to ways because he had “visited royal palaces hominem attack – pure learn about the aristocracy or rubbed scores of times.” and simple.” elbows at the Mermaid with fellow actors The offenses to logic and scholarship who played before royalty and used that go on and on in this book to the extent but if we did, we realize that his motive alleged knowledge to recreate the lives that perhaps they are – in a perverted way behind this book becomes clearer with of the nobility. Shapiro’s concept stops – a compliment to what laborers in the every insinuation and attack: He wishes at what an author writes about, not what authorship vineyard have accomplished. to replace the legendary Edmond Malone he creates. Ricky Gervais was asked For, if their work has received such at- as the bearer of Shakespearean truth! why he didn’t write the television show, tention from one of the establishment’s For it was Malone, Shapiro argues, who The Office, until he was forty years old. anointed, perhaps it is a measure of how introduced the cult of personality – the While Gervais pondered, an associate the establishment might be running scared idea that the plays and poems could said, “Because you would have failed at after all. For example, Shapiro’s argument reflect autobiographical information – into it.” And Gervais agreed. He would have for the Stratford man provides one of the Shakespeare criticism. Malone committed failed because it took him that long to live grandest examples of circular reasoning the original sin of Shakespearean criticism through working at offices of various types in all of scholarship. His argument proves that opened the floodgates of the unfor- until they became part of his experience to be little more than this: Shaksper (my tunate and misguided questioning of the that he could then recreate for his show. spelling) wrote the works because his very identity of the man who wrote under He could have visited offices, he could name appears on them. the name Shakespeare. It was Malone who have talked with office workers, he could If your assumption that Shaksper spawned the Irelands, Garricks, Freuds have looked up office in Wikipedia. But is Shakespeare provides incontestable and Looneys of the world. it is an entirely different thing to have proof to you that he is the playwright, Shapiro seeks to correct Malone’s lived through it, to have experienced the then all of your statements relying on that error: to assure us that writers of the time kinds of things that happen in offices assumption will be unassailable, won’t simply did not admit personal elements and the kinds of people who work there. they? The minute you allow the possibil- into their work, and that Shake- speare’s Ricky Gervais is no Shakespeare. The ity that Shakespeare is a pen name, this magnificent literature is explained by experience he depicts is not nearly as indisputable position crumbles to dust. It genius and imagination. Is this all a manic intense and meaningful, but the principal is possible, for example, to go page by exercise by Shapiro to seize the crown of is the same. page, paragraph by paragraph, document Shakespearean authority from the vaunted It is precisely Shakespeare’s profound by document through S. Schoenbaum’s brow of the sainted Malone? depiction of human experience that makes documentary life of Shakespeare and find Enough of turning Shapiro’s method (cont’d on p. 23) page 14 May 2010 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter

(cont’d from p. 1) the Ottomans. (One might consider that terror to Amurath...and [he] was glad to signed on November 11, 1606, between justice was served when, in the climactic make truce with Ladislaus and Huniades the King of Hungary and the Turks: battle of Varna on November 10, 1444, upon such conditions as they listed to make both Ladislaus and Cardinal Cesarini … Upon these conditions the Turks being ... it was a disgraceful peace, by which were killed.) agreed, so was a truce concluded on both 700 villages were said to have passed parts for ten years, and with solemn oath under Turkish dominion ... the words, at between them confirmed. once so pointed and so irrelevant, must be Varna: the Aftermath a topical allusion; and there can be little Kenneth M. Setton, in Papacy and ... at which time pope Eugene, so soon as hesitation in attaching them to the peace the Levant: 1204-1571, says that over he heard the Turk had returned into Asia, signed at Zsitva-Torok ... (Quiller-Couch, the centuries there has been debate over sendeth Julianus Caesarianus, his cardinal Wilson 104-105) ... unto Ladislaus the aforesaid king, with various issues, such as whether or not Although this allusion fits the Stratfordian full dispensation and absolution to break Vladislaus signed the peace treaty before his oath and league with the Turk ... paradigm, it was not the only noteworthy he launched his attack, whether an oath peace treaty signed by a King of Hungary. given to a non-Christian was binding, ... But the pope belike thought, that as he There was a much earlier one – one so well and whether either party ever intended to might lawfully break promise with John known that Christopher Marlowe made keep the peace. In any case, Setton points Huss, and with other Christians, so also he use of it in his Tamburlaine the Great, out that, as early as 1445, contemporary needed not to observe any league or true Part 2. This earlier episode involved the writers such as Aeneas Sylvius and Filippo taken with the Turk ... [Ladislaus] set out Treaty of Edirne and the Peace of Szeged, Buonaccorsi were accusing Vladislaus with his army ... and ... came to Varna, a negotiated and signed by Sultan Murad II of having broken his oath, and Cardinal town of Bulgaria... of the Ottoman Empire and King Vladislaus Cesarini of playing a key role in that act ... The fight continued three days and three III of Hungary in 1444. (Setton 78-80). Although few Englishmen nights together ... but the priests and prelates in the late sixteenth century would have who were in the field ... seeing the Turks Historical Background had access to the works of Sylvius and begin to fly, unskillfully left their army to The politics of the countries of Eastern Buonaccorsi, the story of Vladislaus III and pursue the enemy, so that they ... gave great Europe have always been complex and his broken oath would nevertheless have advantage to the Turks … in which field, difficult to fathom. The following state- been widely known to Shakespeare and Ladislaus, the young king of Poland, having ment of events is greatly condensed and his contemporaries. According to William his horse first killed under him, was stricken down and slain. The pope’s bishops, flying simplified: On January 1, 1443, with Zunder, “Within protestant mythology the battle [of Varna] was an archetypal to save themselves, fell into the marshes, the encouragement of Pope Eugene IV, and there were destroyed, sustaining a dirty the Hungarians embarked on a crusade instance of catholic duplicity ...” (Zunder 96, note 12). Martin Luther, in his 1520 death, condign to their filthy falsehood and against the Ottoman Empire. Initially, the untruth. Julian the cardinal, who with the thesis, “An Open Letter to the Christian Hungarians were successful in battle, but pope was the chief doer in breaking the just before Christmas of that year a series nobility of the German Nation Concerning league, in the way was found dead, being of skirmishes occurred that left both sides the Reform of the Christian Estate,” made full of wounds, and spoiled to his naked severely battered. When Murad II subse- reference to the episode: skin ... (Foxe, IV 33-34). quently approached the Christians with an ... a hundred years ago, that fine king of offer of peace, Vladislaus was receptive, Hungary and Poland, Wladislav, was slain Vladislas in Measure for Measure and negotiations began. Despite the fact by the Turk ... because he allowed himself to If the First Gentleman’s prayer for that Vladislaus wanted and needed the truce be deceived by the papal legate and cardinal, “peace, but not the King of Hungary’s,” is and broke the good and advantageous with Murad, there were elements within a reference to Vladislas III and his abroga- treaty which he had sworn with the Turk his government and among his allies who tion of the 1444 Peace of Szeged, then it pushed strongly for renewed aggression ... How could I tell all the troubles which the popes have stirred up by the devilish resonates with a deeper meaning than the against the Ottomans. Chief among them presumption with which they annul oaths tepid Stratfordian gloss. Such a peace would, was the papal emissary, Cardinal Giuliano and vows which have been made between indeed, be “highly undesirable.” Although Cesarini, who persuaded Vladislaus to great princes. (Luther 86). there is no reason why this reference could swear an oath – prior to signing the peace not have been employed by the Stratford By the time of Elizabeth I, Luther’s writ- treaty with Murad – in which he vowed man in a play written in 1606, this new ings were available in English translation, to abjure any treaties, present or future, interpretation is of particular interest to but there was an even more accessible which he had made or was to make with Oxfordians. First, it backdates the source version of the story in John Foxe’s Actes the Sultan. The peace treaty with Murad of the reference to a period within the And Monuments (1563). He treated the was signed on August 15, 1444, but on lifetime of Edward de Vere. Second, the incident at some length: September 20, 1444 Vladislaus broke anti-Catholic tone of the remark lends greater the treaty by sending his army against These victories of Huniades struck no little credence to the proposition that Measure Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter May 2010 page 15

First Oxfordian Edition of Othello

Editors Ren Draya, professor of Brit- military, music, the Italian language, and editors, are Antony and Cleopatra (Michael ish and American literature at Blackburn the government and topography of Venice Delahoyde, Washington State University); College, and Richard F. Whalen, co-general and Cyprus. A major influence on the play Hamlet (Prof. Jack Shuttleworth, U.S. Air editor of the Oxfordian Shakespeare Series, was commedia dell’arte, at its height in Force Academy, retired); The Tempest have completed the first Oxfordian edition Venice when Oxford was there but unknown (Roger Stritmatter, Coppin State University, of Othello. Informed by the view that the in England. Another strong influence was and Lynne Kositsky); Henry the Fifth, 17th Earl of Oxford wrote the Shakespeare Oxford’s concern for his reputation and (Kathy R. Binns-Dray, Lee University); plays, this edition of Othello has drawn abhorrence of the specter of cuckoldry. King John (Daniel L. Wright, Concordia on the extensive research and writings of Among the articles in the appendix is the University, Portland, OR); Love’s Labour’s Oxfordians and Stratfordians to describe significance of music in Othello, and the Lost (Felicia Londre, University of Mis- the many correspondences between the dramatist’s unusual knowledge of the port souri-Kansas City); and Much Ado About play and Oxford’s life. of Famagusta on Cyprus. Nothing (Anne Pluto, Leslie University). In the introduction to the play, and in The Oxfordian Shakespeare Series The Oxfordian Othello ($16.95 + shipping) the generous line notes, the editors exam- debuted with Macbeth, edited by Whalen is available direct from Llumina Press at ine how the play reflects the dramatist’s and published by Horatio Editions-Llumina 866-229-9244 (toll free) or at www.llumina. knowledge of the aristocracy, court life, the Press. Forthcoming in the series, and their com (Literature and Fiction).

(Beane, cont’d from p. 14) (Altrocchi, cont’d from p. 6) for Measure must have been written before eight-year-old Edward de Vere, whom I Works Cited the accession of James, whose political believe to be Shakespeare, was the transla- Altrocchi, Paul, “Edward De Vere As Translator of agenda was pro-Catholic. tor of Virgil or that Thomas Phaer was his Ovid’s Metamorphoses,” The Shakespeare Oxford pseudonym, rebutting the conclusion of Newsletter. vol. 41, no. 2 (Spring 2005), pp. 6-9. Altrocchi, Paul, “Shakespeare, not Arthur Works Cited Professors Brame and Popova that was Brooke, Wrote Tragicall Historye of Romeus not backed up by their usual linguistic The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. Ste- & Juliet,” The Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter, phen Reed Cattley, London, 1837, vol. 4. analytical techniques. vo. 43, no. 1 (Winter 2007), pp. 22-6. Luther, Martin, “To the Christian Nobility of the This analysis of one translation of Barrell, Charles Wisner, “Arthur Golding: The German Nation,” tr. Charles Jacobs, rev. by James Thomas Phaer and three of Arthur Golding, uncle of Edward de Vere and the intimate part he Atkinson, in Martin Luther: Three Treatises, 2nd confirms them as the true translators of the played in the development of Shakespeare’s creative genius,” Parts 1 and 2. The Shakespeare Fellowship ed., Philadelphia, 1970, pp. 1-112. “Texts and Intro- works studied and does not expand the News-Letter, October-November, 1940. ductions,” Luther’s Works, ed. Helmut T. Lehmann, known canon of William Shakespeare either Bower, Rick, Thomas Phaer and The Boke of St. Louis, c. 1955, vols. 31, 36, and 44. into early childhood or more broadly into Chyldren (1544), Arizona Center for Medieval and Measure for Measure, The New Shakespeare, adolescence. The 1562 long narrative poem Renaissance Studies, Tempe, Arizona, 1999. eds. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet Brame, Michael and Popova, Galina, Shake- Wilson, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1922. remains the first known major published work speare’s Fingerprints, Adonis Editions, 2002. Measure for Measure, The Arden Shakespeare, of Shakespeare, and the brilliantly innova- Golding, Arthur, The Abridgment of the History ed. Julius Walter Lever, London, 1965. tive re-creation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, of Trogius Pompeius by Justin, London, 1564. Setton, Kenneth M., The Papacy and the Levant: Golding, Arthur, De Bello Italico Adversus Gotthos, 1204-1571, vol. 2 (The Fifteenth Century), Ameri- published in 1565 and 1567, is a hallmark The History of Leonard Aretine, London, 1563. can Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1978. of Shakespeare’s adolescence. Golding, Arthur, The Eight Books of Caius Julius Zunder, William, Elizabethan Marlowe: Writing Paul Altrocchi, MD, graduated from Har- Caesar Containing His Martial Exploits in the and Culture in the English Renaissance, Hull, vard University, Harvard Medical School Realm of Gallia. London, 1565, reprint by Da England, 1994. and the New York Neurological Institute. A Capo Press, New York, 1968. former professor of neurology at Stanford, Nelson, Alan, Monstrous Adversary, Liverpool Connie Beane has been studying and Altrocchi completed his career as a neu- University Press, 2003. researching Shakespeare from an Oxfordian Ogburn, Dorothy and Ogburn, Charlton, This rologist in Palo Alto and in Oregon. Since Star of England, New York, 1952. viewpoint for over twenty-five years. She can retirement he has published seven books Phaer, Thomas. The Seven First Books of the be reached at [email protected]. q and two dozen papers on the authorship Eneidos of Virgil, London, 1558. question, and edited, with Hank Whittemore, Ruhräh, John, Pediatrics of the Past, New York, 1925. the first five volumes of a new Oxfordian Whittemore, Hank, “Oxford’s Metamorphoses,” anthology series, Building the Case for The Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter, vol. 32, no. Edward de Vere As Shakespeare. 4 (Fall 1996) pp. 1, 11-15. q page 16 May 2010 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter

An Interview with Stephanie Hughes, Former Editor of The Oxfordian By Linda Theil

tephanie Hopkins Hughes has been thin were the pages, how small the type, Sinvolved with the Shakespeare Au- I got the message: “Wow! There’s a big thorship Question, in research and story here!” I sped through the first half, publication, for many years. She was all devoted to Ogburn’s arguments with recently honored with the 2010 Scholar- Stratfordians, thinking all the time: “Who ship Award at Concordia University’s was it? Who was it?” In 1987, I moved Conference in Shakespeare Authorship to Boston where I got involved with the Studies. Hughes completed her B.A. at Boston Shakespeare Oxford Society Concordia in 2000. In her senior year, where I got to know Charles and Bill she wrote “Shakespeare’s Tutors: The Boyle, Betty Sears, Charles Beauclerk, Education of Edward de Vere,” a 235-page Hank Whittemore, and other Oxfordians. study principally focusing on Oxford’s Studies began in earnest when I got a job at early education, and his relationships Boston University, digging into the works Shakespeare. Dan made it possible for with such notable men as Sir Thomas of the University Wits and other writers me to lecture on my discoveries at the Smith and Laurence Nowell. In addition of the period. I gave my first lecture at conference that he began in 1997, and to her decade-long tenure as editor of the the Boston SOS conference in 1994, on to travel with him to London in 1999 on Shakespeare Oxford Society’s journal, similarities in the biographies of Oxford a three-month student exchange, where The Oxfordian (1997-2007), Hughes and Lord Byron, another aristocratic I was able to do research at the British edited the 2008 anthology celebrating romantic writer, and prepared one on Library. In 1997, I finally got the chance the SOS’s first 50 years, and has written Robert Greene for the 1995 conference to give my lecture on Robert Greene at several authorship booklets, including in Greensboro, N.C. the Seattle SOS conference, publishing a “Oxford and Byron,” “The Relevance of When Charles Beauclerk became pamphlet on the subject that same year. Robert Greene to the Oxfordian Thesis,” president of the SOS in 1995, he appointed Concordia gave me the opportunity and “The Great Reckoning: Who Killed me editor of a new annual journal, to be to put my research on Sir Thomas Smith Marlowe and Why?” In 2006, Hughes named The Oxfordian, naming Bill Boyle into a senior thesis, which since then has co-wrote a narration based on Oxford’s as editor and designer of a revamped expanded into a book which I hope to see letters for a CD read by Sir Derek Jacobi. newsletter. It was thought that having such published someday. Having graduated in In early 2009, she launched a blog on the a platform, one that adhered to accepted 2000, I continued to give lectures at SOS authorship question, politicworm.com/. scholarly protocols, might encourage conferences and at Concordia, and to write Hughes entertains controversial views: Oxfordian scholars in efforts to do the articles for The Oxfordian and various that Oxford wrote Greene’s works, and kind of detailed and accurate research newsletters. In 2004, I was the grateful that Emilia Bassano was the Dark Lady, that was so difficult to get published in recipient of funds donated by participants and that Marlowe was not a spy for mainstream journals and books. This in the Concordia conference to help Walsingham. A summary of these topics projection proved accurate, for during my me continue my research into Oxford’s appear after the following interview, and ten years as editor a number of important childhood and education in London. can be viewed in more detail on her blog, authorship scholars made their debuts. [The With the help of English Oxfordians, I and on the SOS website. Oxfordian debuted in 1997.] Most of the located the site of Ankerwycke, located ground-breaking articles published during on the Thames near Windsor, where De SOS: How long have you been interested in those years are available for download Vere spent his first five years with Smith, the Shakespeare authorship question? from the SOS website. and Hill Hall in Essex, where he spent In 1996, I moved to Portland, Oregon, the final three before transferring to Hughes: In 1986, I was standing in the to be near one of my daughters and her William Cecil in London. I spent three library in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard family. While there I met Prof. Daniel days at Smith’s alma mater in Cambridge, when a friend handed me something off Wright, who persuaded me to return to Queens’ College, reading his notebooks the new arrivals table, Ogburn’s The school at his university, Concordia, where and doing research in the Cambridge Mysterious William [Shakespeare]. I’ve I had three wonderful years studying University Library. I was also able to do been reading artists’ biographies all my Greek and Latin and researching Oxford’s research at the Essex Record Office and life, so when I read bios of Shakespeare, education. During this period I discovered at the Bodleian Library at Oxford. I always got the feeling that I just hadn’t Sir Thomas Smith, the tutor that gave found the right book yet. When I saw Oxford the childhood experiences and SOS: Has your authorship quest evolved Ogburn’s book, how big it was, how education that enabled him to become over your period of study? Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter May 2010 page 17

Hughes: Certainly, although I’m still and personalities of Oxford, the University so far is so small compared to what the following the trail of the questions I Wits, the Sidneys, the Queen’s Men, Robert orthodox have done for 400 years. Who had after reading Ogburn, what kind Greene, Thomas Nashe, Thomas Watson, knows how often they saw something of a childhood and education [Oxford] Thomas Lodge, John Lyly, Christopher about Oxford and ignored it because he had, what he’d written before becom- Marlowe, the Burbages, Edward Alleyn, was not what they were looking for. ing Shakespeare, and what were his Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon, and Sir Francis I’d like to see us focus on getting histo- relationships with the other writers and Walsingham. I intend to show how and rians on board. The history of Shakespeare theater people of his time. The first big why these artists and their patrons were at the universities should tell us that the breakthrough came with realizing that he all so closely involved with each other, English Departments will never open the was the only person who could possibly and why. door of their own free will – it took them have written the Robert Greene canon, 200 years to allow his works to be studied still a controversial matter. The second SOS: Where do you think the authorship or produced. The history departments was the discovery of the importance of is headed? are a much better bet. All they have to his tutor, Sir Thomas Smith, since Smith’s Hughes: I really have no idea. We could lose is Oxford as Burghley’s ungrateful library and life-style matches so perfectly continue at this level for another hundred son-in-law, a minor figure certainly. By with Shakespeare’s sources. This raised years or it could reach the tipping point placing the great Shakespeare at Eliza’s the question of how long he’d spent with any day. We have moved forward though. Court along with Sidney, Raleigh, and him. One of the factors that people don’t There’s a general acceptance now, if Drake they have so much to gain. realize until they get into researching this not of Oxford, then at least of the idea period is how little of importance was that someone other than William wrote SOS: Are you planning to publish a saved. We read the same texts over and the canon. Most people by now have at book? over because that’s all that’s left. It was least heard of the question, which most Hughes: Yes. It’s taken me a long time, a time of revolution, and people simply had not 20 years ago. Every book that partly because it’s hard to stop researching, didn’t commit themselves to paper. Just gets published brings more interested but chiefly because of the problems getting because there’s no record doesn’t mean readers. And from the outside there’s a mainstream or academic publisher to nothing was happening. Au contraire! been a definite shift. Where articles on take a chance on this subject, particularly Nor does it mean that we can’t figure out the subject used to frame it as “the Truth” from the angles I observe it. But the what was happening through secondary versus “the Lunatics,” then “the Experts” time may finally be ripe. Right now I’m or even third hand evidence, so long as versus “some interesting questions,” giving caught between several approaches, more we have enough of it. We may not have equal time to both, now more often than narrowly on Oxford’s education, more a smoking gun, but we do have an awful not it’s weighted to our side with only widely on the entire writing community, lot of spent shells. a passing head-shake from the Strats. or perhaps on the history of the London I’d say that the most important devel- Perhaps younger editors, less invested Stage, now that we can put its central opment for me over the past two or three in what they were told by their English figure where he belongs. years is the desire to create a believable Big professors, are gradually moving up into Picture, to bring everything from that time positions of authority. We’ll see. SOS: What happens next for you? that relates to the theater and publishing The most interesting development in Hughes: I’m going to keep on with into a single scenario. The only picture we a long time is the published acknowledg- the blog. For the first time I’m actually have now, based on what records remain, is ment by the respected Shakespearean communicating with people on a steady of a handful of writers, actors, and patrons Brian Vickers that he agrees with Richard basis, not just once or twice a year at who had next to no connection with each Kennedy’s online argument that the a conference to a handful of listeners, other. That simply can’t be the case. This Stratford monument was originally made who, sorry to say, sometimes take a nap was a small community. Everyone knew for John Shakspere. This is huge. It also during a lecture that took me months to each other. Of course, to create such a shows what can be done with the Internet. prepare. With the blog, every day that scenario with so little to go on in the way What I would like to see is a few scholars goes by somebody’s reading something of records, I have to fill in with conjecture, taking on the question who have the time about Oxford or the world he lived it that but by adding the texts themselves, and and the money to do the heavy lifting in they haven’t heard before. I can’t tell you with the known history of the period as a the archives. It doesn’t matter whether how much that means to me. backdrop, a believable picture is becoming independent, or, if academic, from what more coherent every day. My focus recently discipline: English literature, history, Greene’s Groatsworth as a joke has been on creating a scenario for the anthropology, psychology, undergrad, 1580s, the “darkness before the dawn” of post doctorate, somebody who lives in After four years of closely examining the great era of Shakespeare and the Lord London or can get there often, who can Greene and his works, Hughes came to the Chamberlain’s Men. This means bringing go after the documents and actually start realization that Greene’s Groats-worth of together the currently disassociated works to research. What we’ve managed to do Wit was an elaborate joke. She sensed that page 18 May 2010 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter there was too much humor surrounding Emilia Bassano Lanier as the Dark Lady Sir Thomas Smith as the Real a work that all agreed, both then and “Smoking Gun” After Hughes read A.L. Rowse’s book later, was written by Greene in his death on Emilia Bassano as Shakespeare’s Dark Until Hughes began researching agonies. Her suspicions were verified when Lady, another major piece of the authorship Oxford’s childhood, no one had published she discovered that the “surfeit of pickle puzzle for Hughes fell into place. She saw more than a passing mention of his tutor, herring” that supposedly caused Greene’s that several of the problems that Rowse Sir Thomas Smith. Hughes discovered that histrionic death was in fact a reference to struggled to justify had been resolved Smith was a very important figure in his a popular clown figure of the time named with Oxford as Shakespeare, such as the time, both at Cambridge University and Pickle Herring. She made her theory imperious tone of some of the sonnets to later during stints as secretary of state public in 1996 on an authorship listserv Southampton (as though one lord were under both Edward VI and Elizabeth I. As and in 1997 in a lecture at the Seattle SOS writing to another), their age difference (not mentioned above, Sir Thomas Hughes was conference; she published a pamphlet nearly enough with William as author), and the subject of her senior thesis at Concordia about it that same year. With Oxford as so forth. Rowse showed that Emilia Bassano University. She published an article in The Greene, in her opinion, a big piece of the Lanyer fit Shakespeare’s description of the Oxfordian titled “Shakespeare’s Tutor, Sir Shakespeare puzzle falls into place. Dark Lady. Rowse, of course, was not about Thomas Smith (1513-1577).” Hughes took to connect her to Oxford, but, Hughes saw two research expeditions to the U.K., and Mary Sidney as John Webster that Bassano, Lanier and Oxford have a visited the two locations where Oxford Shakespeare’s story begins with plays number of connections: “Bassano grew up lived and studied with Smith, where he like The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of in Shoreditch not far from Fisher’s Folly. She absorbed the immense classical learning York in the 1580s (later rewritten as Henry was brought up and educated by Oxford’s exhibited later in Shakespeare’s works. VI-Part 3) and extends for 30 years into sister-in-law. And, the dates, their ages, plus Hughes’s research suggests that Smith the second decade of the 17th century. The her potent sex appeal, as revealed by Simon was closely involved with the creation of latter third of this history is coincident with Forman in his diary, plus her connections to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. the Jacobean era when Shakespeare’s plays Southampton, fit the love triangle described were the source of the great artistic and by Shakespeare in Sonnets 40-42 and 133.” The Birth of the London Stage as the First financial success of the company known Her article on the topic, “New Light on the Step towards a Functional Democracy by then as the King’s Men. While studying Dark Lady,” was published in the Shakespeare Hughes believes that Shakespeare’s the voices of the other playwrights of the Oxford Newsletter (Fall, 2000). importance extends beyond the confines Jacobean period, it struck Hughes that the of literature and linguistics. She believes plots of John Webster’s two masterpieces Christopher Marlowe as Martyr, not Spy that Oxford helped to foster year-round closely reflected events in the lives of Mary Hughes does not accept that Christo- commercial theaters in London soon after Sidney and her sons, the patrons of the pher Marlowe was spying for Walsingham. he returned from Italy. It was Oxford, she London Stage to whom the First Folio was Though delighted with Charles Nicholl’s believes, who created the situation whereby dedicated. Similarities of Sidney’s known sleuthing in his book on Marlowe, The acting companies could make their livings poetry to Webster’s language, the obvious Reckoning, Hughes found that Nicholl’s solely from ticket sales to individuals fact that both plays were written from a idea that poets and spies are birds of a feather rather than having to rely on wealthy woman’s point of view, Webster’s lack of a seemed more like special pleading than patrons or other authorities who had the writer’s biography, plus a host of corrobo- anything supported by history. Hughes’s power to dictate what they performed.” rating dates and details, all contributed to deep research on Marlowe finds nothing She adds, “Though creating a democracy Hughes’s conclusion that these plays were to corroborate Marlowe’s image as a spy; was probably not one of Oxford’s goals, written by Sidney, that she was involved she believes that this idea arose from a by helping to open the Stage to the public in writing plays for Henslowe as early as misinterpretation by scholars of a letter as a year-round and almost daily option, he 1604, and that all the publications credited sent by the Privy Council to Cambridge helped provide a situation where a genuine to Webster were Sidney’s. In Hughes’s in 1587 about his right to a degree. She exchange of ideas was possible between opinion, this is important because it would presented her evidence at the Concordia playwrights and an audience who may not show that Oxford was not the only court conference in 1997, and then published, have been able to read, but who certainly writer to use a proxy. In 2003, Hughes spoke The Great Reckoning: Who Killed Marlowe could think. I believe that once this becomes on Sidney’s authorship of The Duchess of and Why? An expanded version is available clear to mainstream historians, we will see Malfi at the Concordia conference, and of on her website. “Marlowe’s martyrdom is a revision of their views on how democratic The White Devil at the SOS conference important,” says Hughes, “not only because processes took root in English hearts and in Washington D.C. Her detailed article, it’s the truth, but also because getting him minds, processes that were then transported “No Spring Till Now,” about Sidney as right is crucial to a proper understanding to the colonies in America.” She lectured Webster was published in The Oxfordian of the great drama that was the English on this topic at the New Globe in 2006, that same year. Literary Renaissance.” “Hide Fox and All After.” q Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter May 2010 page 19

Who’s Th’heir? Another Reading of Hamlet’s Opening Line By Hank Whittemore n December, 2009, at a local copy “th’heir” in the same speech of that scene because, in this literary work with the Icenter a woman on line glanced at my (Folger 23 line 79; Riverside 982 line 74; distinct feel of an autobiographical cre- Shakespeare-related papers and asked if Pelican 1131 line 74). ation, the traditionally perceived author I had known Dr. Mark Taylor, Professor “Who’s th’heir” also invites further can demonstrate no personal interest in of English at Manhattan College in New exploration into an obvious but seldom that theme. York City, who had died in April. “He noticed motive for the prince’s behavior. was a famous Shakespearean scholar,” Beyond losing a father, Hamlet has lost his Here is the greatest character in all literature. she said, “and he lived here Here is the Shakespearean in Nyack.” I had no idea character that most resembles that Dr. Taylor had been a Shakespeare, the only one ... neighbor, although I’d read whom we can conceive of as the author of Shakespeare’s plays. most of his book Shakespeare’s (Goddard 344) Darker Purpose: A Question of Incest (1982) and admired A stunning pronounce- his courage in taking on a ment! And who in Elizabethan difficult topic. I mentioned England might have most the authorship question and resembled the eccentric, mis- recalled how the professor understood, suffering figure had scoffed in print at the of the prince who brings a “silly notion” that “someone play to court with lines he else” wrote the Shakespeare has written to stir the blood works. “I wish I’d been able of his monarch? Find such a to discuss it with him,” I said. man and it’s a pretty good bet “He was very enthusiastic,” we’ll know the dramatist who the woman said. “My son created him. was in one of his classes and Dr. Taylor’s insight co- told me one day Dr. Taylor incides with my view that announced excitedly that he’d Hamlet, while packed with had a ‘eureka’ moment about many themes, is ultimately Hamlet the opening line of : a report about the transfer of ‘Who’s there?’ He told the sovereign rule – not in Den- students he had suddenly realized that it place in the world. He has lost his identity. mark but in England. In other words, the meant ‘Who’s the heir?’” By the time the play ends Hamlet has lost play ends up reporting on the succession Could it be that this simple opening his good name as well – not to mention to the throne when Elizabeth died. I have question serves to announce the central his life. How deeply does he feel being agreed with Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn theme of the play? At first I thought the robbed of the throne? How keenly does that Edward de Vere must have written idea seemed farfetched, except for one he feel that he, not Claudius, deserved the first version of the play by 1584, with the thing, the word is often contracted to wear the crown? To what degree is young Fortinbras of Norway standing for by Shakespeare as in “Who’s th’heir.” Hamlet’s emotional turmoil and behavior James of Scotland, who was just eighteen Hamlet Horatio says in , “Not from his motivated by his personal and political (Ogburn 641). If so, Oxford’s prediction th’abilitie mouth, had it ” and in Sonnet 58 concerns related to succession? came true nearly two decades later – in Th’imprison’d the poet writes of “ absence Many critics conclude that “Shakes- the spring of 1603 – when James became of your libertie,” to cite two examples; peare” is speaking through the character of King of England. and more specifically, in Act 1 Scene 2 Hamlet, but what on earth can be driving Within months of the succession Henry V of as printed in the First Folio William Shakspere of Stratford to wrestle Oxford neared his own death on June 24, of 1623, the Bishop of Canterbury speaks with his own psyche through the sufferings 1604 and presumably continued to work of “th’Heir to th’ Lady Lingare”; and in of an heir-apparent to the Danish throne? on Hamlet until the last moment. He would fact the New Folger Library, Riverside, It may be that Stratfordian scholars tend have been speaking for himself and think- Pelican and other modern editions print to ignore the succession question precisely ing of the loss of his own identity as well page 20 May 2010 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter as his place in the world, while writing the There is nothing therefore left to my comfort And he replies: “Replace Stratford Will prince’s dying lament over his “wounded but the excellent virtues and deep wisdom with the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, and name,” followed by his plea to Horatio to wherewith God hath endued our new Master it turns out not to have been such a wistful “tell my story.” The victorious Fortinbras and Sovereign Lord, who doth not come impossibility!” (Delahoyde Hamlet 5). (James) has the final word, declaring that amongst us as a stranger but as a natural I wonder what Mark Taylor made of his prince, succeeding by right of blood and Hamlet “was likely, had he been put on, insight and whether it altered his teaching inheritance, not as a conqueror, but as the to have proved most royally.” With Mark true shepherd of Christ’s flock to cherish of the play. Whatever the case, I doubt he Taylor’s insight, the action of Hamlet can and comfort them. (Chiljan 78) would have changed his Stratfordian views be viewed as framed from start to finish because of the Oxfordian implications of by the underlying problem of succession: It may be that Edward de Vere was try- “Who’s th’heir.” Apparently the notion “Who’s th’heir” or who is supposed to ing to assure the secretary of his loyalty is original, however, and who knows if wear the crown and, come to think of it, while putting his support for James on it might gain support in the future? If it why isn’t Hamlet the new king? the record. Regardless of whatever else does, Dr. Taylor deserves the credit. The opening line presents the dramatic he felt, and whether or not his own noble question that is finally answered at the end, heart had cracked, Oxford appears to Hank Whittemore of Nyack, New York, is the when Hamlet is proclaimed as one who have put the stability of the state and the author of eleven books including The Monu- would have made a good monarch. Members avoidance of civil war ahead of any hopes ment, elucidating the world of Shakespeare’s of the Jacobean audience may well have for an English-born king. As the poet of sonnets (www.shakespearesmonument. viewed Hamlet’s “long delay” in acting the sonnets declares upon the death of com). He currently performs a solo show against Claudius as a mirror reflection of Elizabeth – “the mortal Moon”: based on the book, entitled Shakespeare’s Elizabeth’s long and never-ending delay Incertainties now crown themselves assured Treason (www.shakespearestreason. com), in naming her heir. Because the play’s / And peace proclaims Olives of endless co-written and directed by Ted Story. Whit- literal setting is Denmark, which had an age. [Sonnet 107] temore also has a blog (hankwhittemore. elective monarchy, no character on stage wordpress.com). Professor Michael Delahoyde of wonders why Prince Hamlet has failed to Washington State University said on his succeed his father. It appears that while Bibliography Oxford-Shakespeare website: “What would Hamlet was at school Claudius convened The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, Penguin happen if someone like Hamlet actually the Danish version of an expanded privy Books, New York, 2002. had the chance to be a king? Interesting, council and convinced its elite members to Delahoyde, Michael, Accessed February 3, 2010 elect him. In one of his few references to and dream wistfully.” Delahoyde adds a Goddard, Harold C., The Meaning of Shakespeare, the succession, Ham let pointedly remarks comment from Goddard: University of Chicago Press, 1951, vol. 1. that his uncle had “popp’d in between Lee, Christopher, 1603, St. Martin’s Press, New th’election and my hopes.” What Hamlet’s succession might have York, 2004. Elsewhere, the eldest male son meant may be seen by asking: What if, Letters and Poems of Edward, Earl of Oxford, stood in line to gain the throne. In that on the death of Elizabeth, not James of ed. Katherine Chiljan, San Francisco, 1998. light, the rightful claimant to the throne Scotland but William of Stratford had The Life of Henry V by William Shakespeare, of Denmark had been deprived of the inherited the throne! That would have New Folger Library, New York, 1995. been England falling before William the crown. I believe Oxford must have felt Ogburn, Dorothy and Charlton, This Star of Conqueror indeed. And it did so fall in the England, New York, 1952. the same way when Elizabeth died and sense that, ever since, Shake- speare has James of Scotland made his triumphant The Riverside Shakespeare, The Complete Works, been England’s imaginative king, who 2nd edition, Boston, 1997. journey south from Edinburgh to London. has taught more men and women to play Taylor, Mark, Shakespeare’s Darker Purpose: A Nonetheless Hamlet gave his blessing to perhaps than any other man in the history Question of Incest, AMS Press, Inc., New York, the new ruler: “I do prophesy th’election of the world. (Goddard 386) 1982. q lights on Fortinbras. He has my dying voice. The rest is silence.” Hamlet’s ac- ceptance of Fortinbras reflects Oxford’s role as one of the “Lords Spirituall and SOS-SF Shakespeare Authorship Conference Temperall,” members an expanded privy council convened by Secretary Robert Sept. 16-19, 2010, Ashland, Oregon Cecil to help bring about a peaceful suc- Visit the Shakespeare Oxford Society website for cession. Oxford voted with the others to conference information and registration. proclaim James VI of Scotland as James I of England (Lee 112). He also wrote to The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and Henry IV-Part 1 Cecil just a day or two before Elizabeth’s will be playing at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. funeral on April 28, 1603: Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter May 2010 page 21

John Thomas Looney (1870-1944) By Professor The Revd. V.A. Demant

ohn Thomas Looney, who first attributed of minority movements with a cause, going under his own name. Further when he Jthe authorship of the “Shakespearean” about with a chip on the shoulder and was asked how such a deception as to the plays and the sonnets to Edward de Vere, an obsessional neurosis. He was not by authorship could be carried through and seventeenth Earl of Oxford, was a master temperament an anti-conformist, nor did maintained, he would expound the peculiar at an elementary school in Low Fell, he preen himself for the role of espousing literary atmosphere of the Elizabethan Gateshead, County Durham. As my father an unpopular view. The appearance of age and then enumerate, from cultural and he were close friends in personal and Shakespeare Identified in 1920 surprised and literary history, several examples of intellectual interests, our families met in his acquaintances. He had dropped hints what had been successful literary hoaxes close intimacy for several years. In my to me towards the end of the 1914-18 for a long time. student period I came to know Looney as war, that the Stratfordian authorship was Thomas Looney embarked upon this a philosopher and guide. I am therefore impossible to hold, and that he was setting task with a restrained but determined able to say something of the man himself about deliberately to find, if possible, sense of literary responsibility. He was and of his search for a solution of the the true author. This was all the result of the last man to try to be merely clever. I authorship problem. a conviction borne upon his mind after recall his tall figure, his scholar’s air given Looney, who came of Manx origin, years of teaching Shakespearean plays to by the poise of his shoulders, his gently was a person of broad philosophical, schoolboys, some of them over and over aquiline nose and his trimmed beard, his religious and literary interests. He was again. He has described this process in benign and dignified bearing, and the deeply impressed by greatness in the past the book. frequent sparkle in his eyes. I would say of the European tradition, and he felt it Even after the publication, Looney of him: here was a man who commanded his calling to transmit an appreciation of never brought up the “Shakespeare” confidence in the authorship question this greatness to the younger generation. question spontaneously in my conversa- because he was not one-eyed about that, For some years he belonged to a group of tions with him. But when I asked he was but wise in other fields as well. English followers of August Comte, the ready to answer questions and explain. French philosopher and social thinker, Two phases of his thinking I remember Editor’s Note: This piece was originally who started the original intellectual system quite well. There was first the negative published in the Shakespearean Author- known as Positivism. Comte later founded conviction that what we know of William ship Review (No. 8, Autumn, 1962, pp. a religious society without theistic beliefs, Shakespeare is quite incompatible with 8-9). Vigo Auguste Demant (1893-1983) called the Church of Humanity. He was the man revealed through the plays and had a long and distinguished theological a progressive intellectually in the 19th sonnets. This was not a matter of social career; he also authored several books. century, but socially a conservative of class, or education or even of ideas. It At the time he wrote this piece, he was the counter revolution in France. Looney concerned the unconscious attitudes to Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and derived from Comte a strong sense of the the world and life. Quite early on Looney Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral continuity of history and of the community had to meet the criticism that his was a Theology; his previous post was Canon bases of individual enterprise. He eventu- “snob” view, holding that a man who and Chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral. ally loosened his connection with the had not been to a university and was of According to the Dictionary of National Positivist movement and latterly became bourgeois origin could not be a literary Biography, Rev. Demant traveled to the drawn again to the Church of England, giant. Looney somewhat resented the U.S. to lecture on the Earl of Oxford and with considerable respect for Catholicism. stupidity of this criticism. Certainly, he the Shakespeare authorship. His reading included English poets from maintained, genius arises in any social Chaucer to Wordsworth, Tennyson, Byron milieu and is quite independent of formal and Burns; writers like Carlyle, Emerson, education (witness Burns). But some Michigan Oxfordians John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer; background and peculiar personal attitudes The local SE Michigan novelists like Walter Scott and Thackeray. indeliberately colour a man’s work, and He was also at home with Homer, Dante another man without them cannot produce Oxfordian Group meets and, of course, Shakespeare. He presented counterfeits. Then, secondly and positively, monthly in Farmington Hills. me with a copy of Carlyle’s works with a Looney looked around the large mass of Please join us if you can. special injunction to read “Heroes” before Elizabethan lyrical poetry to find evidence For more information, I was twenty. Another present of his was elsewhere of the mentality and style he visit George Tyrrell’s Lex Orandi. had pictured from the sonnets and plays. oberonshakespearestudygroup. I would describe Looney as a sage. He This put him on the track of Edward de blogspot.com was not in the least like many supporters Vere, some of whose poems have survived page 22 May 2010 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter

Two New SOS Board Appointments

oan Leon, of Berkeley, California, and became convinced that Edward de Vere physicists like data and eagerly follow it JJames Boyd, of Millwood, New York, was Shakespeare.” Leon, who now serves wherever it leads,” said Boyd. were appointed as interim trustees on on the membership and fundraising com- The Board of Trustees is looking the Shakespeare Oxford Society Board mittees, has been involved in non-profit for more candidates to fill other Board until the next SOS general meeting in fundraising and program development vacancies. This year, President John September 2010. They fill vacancies during her entire career. Among her Hamill, Michael Pisapia, Virginia Hyde, by the resignation of husband and wife longest and most successful projects and Brian Bechtold, will complete their Toni Downs and Stephen Downs, who was raising millions of dollars towards terms. Hamill has served the maximum of are currently writing and producing a a center for the disabled, located in nine years in succession on the Board and Broadway musical. Berkeley. will not be eligible for re-election until “I have been a member of SOS since Although long familiar with the he has been off the Board at least one 1994,” said Leon, “when I attended the authorship controversy, Boyd became year. Board members with terms ending conference in Carmel. I went to that especially interested after reading an in 2011 include James Sherwood and meeting because my husband, Ramon article in The New York Times about Roger Susan Grimes Width, and board members Jiménez, was fascinated with the topic Stritmatter’s thesis on Oxford’s Geneva with terms ending in 2012 include Mat- and I wanted to share in it with him. I Bible. Boyd, who holds a doctorate in thew Cossolotto, Richard Joyrich, and kept going because I loved the search physics, found this tangible evidence Richard Smiley. for answers, enjoyed the people, and very convincing for Oxford’s case. “We

Letter from SOS President John Hamill

reetings Shakespeare Oxford Society dues and other revenues, will insure that Oxfordian as the best American academic Gmembers. While we have made some we can finance the society’s publications, journal on the authorship question (www. progress, we still have many big challenges The Oxfordian and the Shakespeare Oxford brooklynrail.org). As part of our outreach ahead. James Shapiro has openly stated Newsletter, and other activities, including program, we are mailing The Oxfordian in his new book, Contested Will, that a new program of grants for researchers to to 400 English professors in academic his objective is to end the Shakespeare locate, translate, and publish documents institutions around the country. This authorship controversy. Academia fears related to the Earl of Oxford and his case effort has been underwritten by a $500 that we are out to destroy Shakespeare. for the Shakespeare authorship. gift from one of our members, and dona- The truth is just the opposite: when We have good news to share about tions from the SOS Board of Trustees. Oxford is accepted as the true author, our public education efforts. In November An additional contribution from you at Shakespeare’s works will gain a new 2009, the BBC interviewed The Oxfordian this time will help us with all of these perspective and dimension. We need to Editor Michael Egan. In March, About. activities. I will soon be putting forth promote the media attention to the author- com published a two-part interview with specific proposals for fundraising and I ship issue, and to inform the public and SOS Second Vice-president, Matthew Cos- hope that our membership will rise to the academia about what is so obvious to us solotto. We are also printing extra copies challenge. Please join me in supporting – the connection between Oxford’s life of Ramon Jiménez’s excellent article, “The this effort, and contact me with ideas and Shakespeare’s works. Case for Oxford Revisited,” to distribute as about how the Society can best direct its I want to thank you for renewing a pamphlet and to feature on our website. energies and resources: 415-596-4149, your membership and hope that you Jiménez’s piece appears in the latest issue [email protected]. I look forward to will consider making a contribution to of The Oxfordian. We are proud to report hearing from you. the Society. You may be aware that the that William Niederkorn described The Society deliberately keeps its dues lower than the amount necessary to cover basic expenses to make it as affordable to as Visit the many people as possible. But this means that we must appeal to those who can do SOS News Online: a little more to make up the difference. Our goal this year is to raise $20,000. This amount, when combined with our shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/ Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter May 2010 page 23

Letter to Editor (cont’d from p. 13) the playwright Shakespeare. His royal Does that mean that Shapiro is lying A last minute error seems to have crept into characters emerge as complex, deeply through his teeth? So this is how one of the copy for my essay, “Ben Jonson & The realized human beings because the author the most renown self-appointed crusaders Tempest: “the Copie may be Mistaken for has been there and has seen the situations against Shakespeare authorship of our the Principall.” The error occurs on page 19, and the conflicts that produce character, time makes the case to end all cases, to in “Figure 1,” which compares characters irony, action, and consequence. What can put an end to the authorship debate once and their “humours” in Jonson’s Every be more personal – for example – hence and for all: by attacking its proponents. Man in His Humor to similar characters more exquisite, than Sonnet 29, “When, The problem with that approach is that and “humours” in The Tempest. There is, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, there are more proponents, especially of course, no character named “Antonio” /I all alone beweep my outcast state /And for Oxford, every day. Will Shapiro be in EMIHH. The final character progression trouble deaf heaven with my bootless delving into the personal obsessions of of the list should have read, “Prospero, cries /And look upon myself and curse the Supreme Court justices who have privileged light wit,” in the column for Every my fate,” or the combative Sonnet 121, declared reasonable doubt (and, in one Man in His Humour, becoming “Antonio, “No, I am that I am, and they that level case, beyond a reasonable doubt) against privileged dark wit” in The Tempest column. /At my abuses reckon up their own”? the Stratford man? Elsewhere, the list of words that I claim, How does a professor of literature such Sooner or later, orthodox defenders of “appear nowhere else in Shakespeare’s as Shapiro, supposedly sensitive to the the traditional bard like Professor Shapiro canon, but do appear in Jonson’s works” power and nuance of Shakespeare, equate are going to have to face issues. Shapiro mistakenly lists “barley” (“barley-broth” in such poetry with that impersonal doggerel doesn’t do it. He is chatty and breezy. Henry V), “imposter” (spelt uniquely with adorning Shaskper’s grave, “And curst be But so was Bryson. At least Shapiro has an “e” in The Tempest; “impostor” in All’s he that moves my bones”? some credentials. Oxfordians were hoping Well and Pericles), and “fens.” Although Contested Will requires more attention for better from this world-recognized Lear has “fen-sucked,” the mistake was than can be given to it here. Shapiro has Shakespeare expert. Get beyond the ad in taking a word from the wrong column gone beyond simply dismissing the huge hominem attacks, however, and nothing in my notes, where “fens” appears among body of authorship research and analysis much is there. Anyone who wants to learn the rare words shared with Coriolanus, out of hand, but not much beyond. For he about the history and current state of another likely candidate for Jonson’s forging does not fairly present the case for author- authorship research and analysis would talents. I would also withdraw “totters,” an ship, not even the basics. This book is do much better to read Warren Hope insignificant sole appearance. essentially a work of specious scholarship and Kim Holston’s newly revised The While not as rare as “corollary” or since it does not address the issues or the Shakespeare Controversy. Shapiro’s book “correspondent,” Jonson’s use of “fens” real work done by Oxfordians but instead is an attack, and attacks add nothing to (in The Masque of Queens, 1609) remains attacks Oxfordians. Shapiro’s book needs the debate. of interest, since we find him using or analysis like that accorded Alan Nelson’s quoting these two rare Tempest words in faux biography Monstrous Adversary. R. Thomas Hunter, PhD chairs the a note to this couplet: Many of Shapiro’s defenses of Shaksper Oberon Shakespeare Study Group, which is devoted to the greater understanding From the lakes and from the fens,* are preposterous and contradictory, such From the rocks and from the dens. as his contention that identifying an author and appreciation of Shakespeare through *…To which we may add this corollary out by his pen-name is the equivalent of lying. the authorship issue. Before the release of of Agrip. de occult. Philosop. L. 1.c.48. When I refer to Mark Twain, I don’t feel Shapiro’s book, Hunter wrote, “Contest- Saturno correspondent loca quoevis particularly guilty of subterfuge. In his ing Shapiro,” in the Fall 2009 edition of foetida, tenebrosa, subterranean, religiosa lengthy section on Mark Twain, Shapiro the Shakespeare Fellowship newsletter, & funesta ... refers to the author by his familiar pen Shakespeare Matters. q A translation of this passage from Hein- name, almost never as Samuel Clemens. rich Cornelius Agrippa shows Jonson researching Caliban-like territory (Ben Jonson’s Selected Masques, by Stephen “Shakespeare and the Apocrypha” Orgel, p. 350): Summer Seminar (August 9-14, 2010) Concordia University, Portland, OR www.authorshipstudies.org To Saturn correspond any places that are This year’s seminar theme, directed by Dr. Daniel Wright, is “Shakespeare and the fetid, dark, underground, superstitious Apocrypha,” with attention devoted to such works of contested Shakespearean au- or dismal, such as cemeteries, tombs, dwellings deserted by men and ruinous with thorship as Arden of Feversham, Locrine, Edward III, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, age, dark and horrible places, lonely caves, Fair Em and others. The seminar is not offered for academic credit but pursues aca- caverns, wells. Furthermore, fish-ponds, demic rigor in the study of selected topics relevant to resolution of the Shakespeare fens, swamps and the like. Authorship Question. Registrants will be sent recommended advance readings. Marie Merkel page 24 May 2010 Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter

Become Part of the Oxfordian Movement Join the Shakespeare Oxford Society, founded in 1957, and receive the quarterly Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter. Membership Categories: _____ Basic and Student Memberships ($50.00 U.S./Canada; $65.00 foreign) include a subscription to the quar- terly Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter and eligibility to vote at the Annual General Meeting. _____ Regular Membership ($65.00 U.S./Canada; $80.00 foreign) also includes a subscription to the annual re- search journal The Oxfordian. _____ Family Membership ($100.00 U.S./Canada; $115.00 foreign) is a Regular Membership for two individu- als at the same address, both of whom are eligible to vote at the Annual General Meeting. Name of Additional Family Member:______Sponsor ($125.00 U.S./Canada; $140.00 foreign) _____ Contributor ($250 U.S./Canada/foreign) _____ Benefactor ($1000+ U.S./Canada/foreign) Name and Address of Library:______NOTE: Sponsor, Contributor, Patron, and Benefactor Memberships are contributory memberships that can include an ad- ditional Family member residing at the same address and a one-year subscription as a gift to a library of your choice. All members in good standing of the Society are eligible to run for election and to serve as members of the Board of Trustees. Please check below the type of payment (U.S. Dollars only): q Check q Money Order Credit Card: q American Express q MasterCard q Visa Name (as it appears on card): ______Card number: ______Exp. date: ______Signature: ______Please direct questions about membership, or about an application already sent to us, to the attention of Richard Joyrich using the SOS email or mailing address (or, on the on-line membership page, click on the link, Richard Joyrich, Membership Officer). Shakespeare Oxford Society P.O. Box 808 Yorktown Heights, NY 10598-0808 Phone: 914-962-1717 Fax: 914-245-9713 Email: [email protected] The Shakespeare Oxford Society is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization. Donations and memberships are tax deductible (IRS no. 13-6105314, New York no. 07182).