Oxford
Revisited
A Talk with Edward de Vere 17th Earl of Oxford, the pseudonymous author of the Shakespeare poems and plays
Copyright © 2000 by R. Blade All Rights Reserved
Contents
Conspiracies, Poems, Plays (1571-1581)
Imprisonment, Poems, Plays (1581-1591)
This book contains a fictional conversation between a living Host and Edward de Vere (1550-1604) 17th Earl of Oxford (Oxford). I believe that Oxford was the pseudonymous author of the Shakespeare poems and plays. The conversation evolved from the definitive and scholarly book, The Mysterious William Shakespeare, by Mr. Charlton Ogburn who spent many years researching his book. Some of those years were spent in England confirming places and public records pertinent to Oxford and the man from Stratford-on-Avon known as Shakespeare. I hereby acknowledge my appreciation and reliance on Ogburn’s book. Moreover, I excerpted from that book certain letters, quotations, and passages selected for the conversation in this book.
The sonnets in this book were excerpted from the book, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, The Cambridge Edition Text.
R. Blade
I believe the biggest literary hoax was perpetrated in England about 400 years ago. At that time the greatest poems and plays in English were written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, 1558-1603. The poems and plays are the greatest because of their intellectual accomplishments and scintillating language. Those greatest poems and plays are about England’s royalty and nobility, and most were published anonymously or pseudonymously because noble persons were forbidden to publish their works for commoners.
At that time in London there happened to be a William Shaxpere an uneducated commoner from the small town of Stratford-on-Avon. In his provincial Stratford dialect Shaxpere probably sounded like Shakespeare. He was reputed to be a peddler of sacked goods, dabbler in real estate, and a sometimes walk-on actor. Then someone attributed the poems and plays to a William Shakespeare. Was Shaxpere the author Shakespeare? The problem was that no one in Stratford or London ever mentioned Shaxpere as a writer of anything and he never claimed to be a writer. His life was totally devoid of any literary links to any of those greatest poems or plays. After Shaxpere's death his authorship was doubted. How could a commoner be witness to the private lives and conversations of royalty and nobility or events in the court of Queen Elizabeth? How could such an uneducated person accomplish the great intellectual feats exhibited in the poems and plays? Speculation opened the floodgate to a torrent of possible Shakespeares such as Bacon, Fletcher, Greene, Marlowe, Peele, and others. There was even published a mock confession by a learned pig claiming to be the author Shakespeare.
In the early 1920's the scholar Thomas Looney discovered that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford had written poems in the Shakespearean style long before William Shaxpere was old enough to write. The earl was well educated, a man of extraordinary intellectual and literary talents. Because it was considered beneath the dignity of noblemen to publish. Looney speculated the earl had written the poems and plays under the pseudonym William Shakespeare. A word about names of noblemen; they were addressed by the names of the land over which they had titled authority. Edward de Vere, 17 Earl of Oxford was called Oxford.
Today, some 400 years later, the controversy continues. Who wrote the poems and plays attributed to Shakespeare? Was it the Stratford man Shaxpere or Oxford? Stratfordians believe Shaxpere to be the author. Oxfordians believe Oxford to be the author. In ancient Rome priests read animal entrails for signs of impending events. Today, in the absence of dated records or other evidence, we read printed matter in the effort to resolve the authorship controversy. It is my ardent expectation that my talk with Oxford himself will resolve the controversy. Thereafter, being better informed, you're enabled to judge for yourselves. One further point, 400 years ago the purchasing power of the English pound was hundreds of times greater than it is today.
(Walks over to PC console)
Modern technology makes possible the DNA Reconstruction Program. When called with the appropriate input data stream, the program maps Oxford's DNA to resonant string patterns. Exposed to a stream of ultrahigh energy particles, the string patterns reconstruct Oxford's virtual personage, which is quantum teleported to our receiver. Audio-visual equipment is strategically placed (gestures) for optimum processing and recording of Oxford's voice and movement. The program transliterates his responses to voice output in modern American English, except when automatically bypassed for dramatic effect. The linkage between virtual Oxford and DNA program is a wireless interface receiving and transmitting messages. And now gentlewomen and gentlemen, ladies and lords, hearers and viewers I'll log onto the DNA Reconstruction Program and call up Oxford.
(Oxford appears elegantly costumed, gingerly walking and looking around.)
OXFORD What's all this? (gesturing) I know a setting when I see one.
HOST My living room.
OXFORD (Goes to a table lamp and looks under its shade) Strange candlelight indeed, a marvel, a mikros sun.
HOST Electricity, our version of candlepower.
OXFORD E-lec-tric-i-ty, too many syllables for blank verse. You know, one can easily fill out blank verse with one and two syllable words, a series of daDUMs. And you are?
HOST Your host.
OXFORD I'm to be entertained then, quite a reversal. Sir, your attire?
HOST Different than yours.
OXFORD Plainly austere, it lacks character. Does it identify you as host?
HOST In America most men dress alike.
OXFORD The correctness of sartorial banality. Did you say America? My friend Sir Walter Raleigh failed to colonize Roanoke Island.
HOST But later Puritans successfully colonized Plymouth.
OXFORD Another Plymouth?
HOST Yes, in America.
OXFORD Those Puritans denounced my poems and plays as too earthy, immoral. They condemned me, an apostate writer.
HOST We have a free press. We have rights in common.
OXFORD Are you a commoner?
HOST No classes here, all Americans are equal.
OXFORD Surely an error conceived by a melancholy whore in labor pain.
HOST This is the year 2000.
OXFORD 2000! How am I placed some 400 years in the future?
HOST You died in 1604 and...
OXFORD I have no recollection of dying. The last thing I remember, I was infirm with not an able body.
HOST You died of the Black Death, the bubonic plague. Our modern technology has reconstructed you.
OXFORD Tech-nol-o-gy another interesting word, also too long. I must say I find most engaging your new words, especially those with Greek or Latin roots. So, I've been resurrected by your modern craft. Am I to see my father? Sussex? the queen? Vavasor?
HOST You weren't resurrected. You've been reconstructed to your virtual personage, including your memory.
OXFORD Are you the host of Holy Ghost?
HOST No.
OXFORD The ghost of Holy Ghost?
HOST No, no nothing to do with religion. Host as in human.
OXFORD So you are neither host nor ghost of Holy Ghost.
HOST Correct.
OXFORD I always had trouble with the Trinity. This can't be heaven or hell. Am I in purgatory, in the middle again?
HOST None of those imagined places of religion.
OXFORD Well then, your Ariel-contrived technology places me here a blithe spirit. (walks over to host) What's that in your hand a bill of attainder? one of my petitions to the queen? a letter from Burghley?
HOST Notes for our talk.
OXFORD About?
HOST The 400 year controversy over the true author of the William Shakespeare poems and plays.
OXFORD You question my pseudonym?
HOST Not I, but scholars and professors question your authorship because they claim some Shakespeare plays appeared after you died.
OXFORD Appeared like in apparition? Do you mean written, found, performed, or published?
HOST That's part of the controversy. It's why you're here, to settle the matter. With your permission I'd like to begin our talk. (points to chair).
OXFORD Very well (sits, looks around). Are we alone?
HOST Yes.
OXFORD In that case, I will exercise my will for my name is Will; that is, Will Shakespeare.
HOST I have questions about the word play in that metaphor but let's begin at the beginning.
(1550-1571)
HOST You were born 12Apr1550 in the village of Castle Hedingham in the county of Essex, the only son of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford and Margaret Golding, Countess of Oxford.
OXFORD My grandfather the 15th earl, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, carried the crown at the coronation of Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII and mother of our queen. My father the 16th earl, Lord Great Chamberlain, officiated at the coronation of Queen Mary I. He was privileged to escort Princess Elizabeth from her seclusion at Hatfield House to Westminster Abbey accompanied by my mother, her maid-of-honor. In 1588 she was crowned Queen Elizabeth I. By the way, my sister Mary and I were named after King Henry VIII’s two older children.
HOST Did you have a close relationship with your father?
OXFORD Quite. He taught me falconry, hunting, riding. We played the horsemen's Troy Game, which proved my advantage in jousting. He trained me in swordsmanship, courtly manners, all those skills befitting a future Earl.
HOST Future earl?
OXFORD I couldn't be the 17th earl while my father was 16th earl. At that time I was Viscount Bulbeck, Baron Scales and Baldsmere.
HOST Your father had a great interest in the theater and, in fact, had his own company of actors.
OXFORD When I was 12, I accompanied my father to Ipswich along with his juggler, players, and flutist. We received 23 shillings for our services.
HOST Our services, including you?
OXFORD Yes, we performed throughout Essex and elsewhere. Bored with old lines I wrote, and we mouthed, new lines.
HOST Changing the script?
OXFORD There were no scripts. Most actors couldn't read; they recited from memory. They grumbled because they had to memorize new lines, but they did so because my father paid them.
HOST There's an interesting story about your father's confrontation with a wild boar in France.
OXFORD My father was invited to join the king's royal hunting party, which was confronted by a wild, charging boar. My father dismounted from his horse and, with sword drawn, approached the enraged beast. The French, perceiving his action as too dangerous and foolhardy, called him off. To the amazement of the French my father slew the beast, a feat they had never before witnessed.
HOST You had the rare opportunity of meeting the queen when she visited Castle Hedingham.
OXFORD The queen and her entire retinue visited us for a week when I was 11 or so. She was beautiful, comporting herself like a goddess. She mesmerized me. I remember all the attention given to her and all the commotion surrounding her. Her retinue buzzing about her like a gaggle of gadflies. We spent our days outdoors bowling, riding, and hunting. In the evenings, my father's actors would entertain us.
HOST Unfortunately, your father died when you were only 12.
OXFORD He was father and mentor. I had great respect for him and the de Vere lineage. Being a peer of the realm, my father's death made me a royal ward of the crown with the queen my guardian. She placed me in the care of William Cecil, her Master of the Court of Wards. He was also her chief minister, land surveyor, treasurer, administrative factotum, the most powerful man in her court. and in England.
HOST The death of your father made you the 17th Earl of Oxford. Did your mother give you any advice on your impending break with Castle Hedingham?
OXFORD No. She told me I was to leave Castle Hedingham to become a royal ward in Cecil House in London.
HOST Did she give you special instructions, a letter for your appointed custodian William Cecil?
OXFORD No. William Cecil was one of my father's most trusted friends.
HOST Your father was a friend of the most powerful man in England?
OXFORD Of course.
HOST Your journey to London was well noted and remarked upon.
OXFORD I left Castle Hedingham for Cecil House with sevenscore horse all in black to commemorate my father's death. I tell you no band of brigands or highwaymen dare attack me. Commanding the full use of roads, rustics and Londoners made way for us. Arriving at Cecil House, we were viewed an invading army. Mind you, Cecil welcomed me with a low bow.
HOST The queen's chief minister and the most powerful man in England bowing to an earl of 12?
OXFORD Merely protocol, I was a nobleman and he wasn’t.
HOST He was the most powerful man in the queen’s court and in all England.
OXFORD Yes, but he was not a nobleman. You get to be a nobleman by fighting in battle for the king, by spilling blood. I insisted on keeping several of my men attendants and with that was inserted into the Cecil household, a mansion attended by a staff of 80. There waiting for me was Cecil's 6 year old daughter Anne.
HOST A royal ward in the Cecil household at 12, tell me about a typical day.
OXFORD 7 a.m. dancing, then breakfast, French, Latin, writing and drawing. After lunch cosmography, more French, more Latin, then penmanship ending at 4:30.
HOST No recess?
OXFORD The day's remainder was spent outdoors riding, shooting, walking, ending in prayer.
HOST Cecil reported that your tutor told him, I clearly see that my work for the Earl of Oxford cannot much longer be required, a sign of your precocity.
OXFORD Cecil was pleased at my progress in history but not in my keen interest in literature and drama.
HOST Why not?
OXFORD He cared not for the classics or poetry and certainly not for drama. He was too practical for that.
HOST But in spite of his opinions, you wrote the poem Romeus and Juliet when you were about 13. You published it anonymously, why?
OXFORD It was considered socially unacceptable for a nobleman to publish like a commoner. I didn't want to antagonize my guardian, Cecil.
HOST Was that poem the source of your play Romeo and Juliet?
OXFORD The poem was sourced from an Italian tale, years later to become the play.
HOST Did you and Cecil have anything in common?
OXFORD Cecil had extensive gardens because he loved flowers and shrubs. His horticulturist tutored me in nature. I learned to appreciate flowers, their lineage and reproduction, the visual celebration of color and form, the saturation and color density of shades, fragility of tints, their luxuriant springs and summers followed by their shriveled demise and death. We the living see their births, flowerings, deaths, reminding us of our own temporal lives.
HOST So you and Cecil talked about nature?
OXFORD No, but I listened raptly to his harangues about court intrigues, the ambitions of courtiers, Rome and England, Catholics and Protestants. I acquired an ear for the language of court and state. Listening raptly, I realized my views were totally different from his. We were opposites but I respected him.
HOST Did you and your mother correspond?
OXFORD I wrote several letters but she never responded. She wrote to Cecil once inquiring about my father's properties but didn't mention me.
HOST After being uprooted from Castle Hedingham you experienced two more stressful events, your mother's early remarriage and a lawsuit against you.
OXFORD Belittling the memory of my father, my mother rushed with most wicked speed into marriage with Sir Charles Tyrell. I repudiated her for that, for the quick dismissal of my father's memory and therefore of me, a slight to the great de Vere name.
HOST Following that, there was a more traumatic event, the challenge to your title and inheritance.
OXFORD To my life! You see my father was twice married. His first marriage birthed a daughter Katherine, my older half-sister. Katherine married Baron Windsor. The Windsor's sued me in court hoping to invalidate my title by claiming invalid my father's marriage to my mother, his second marriage.
HOST Based on what?
OXFORD A mix-up of church marriage records.
HOST A successful suit would have ...
OXFORD Made me a bastard! no title! no inheritance!
HOST Bastardy is portrayed in several of your plays.
OXFORD He that flinches from me my good name.
HOST Othello?
OXFORD Quite so. Fortunately, applying the law of progenitor, the court ruled in my favor. That scurrilous suit, imprinted in my young memory, put me on guard against the perfidies of familial treachery.
HOST While you were engaged in the legal battle over your title and inheritance Robert Dudley tall, dark, and handsome caught the queen's eye and was rumored to be her lover.
OXFORD More than a rumor, she gave her Robin an apartment in her palace. He wanted to marry her but was already married. Then under mysterious circumstances his wife died, leaving him free to marry the queen. It was rumored he poisoned her so he could marry the queen.
HOST Did he?
OXFORD He was known as England's poisoner, another Borgia, a Machiavellian by nature. The queen could not marry a murderer, so she had Cecil investigate the matter. It was determined his wife fell down a staircase and broke her neck. Relieved, the queen remarked in Italian "Que, si ha rotto il cello"?
HOST What did she say?
OXFORD What, did the sky break?
HOST I don't get the connection.
OXFORD The queen and others thought he had poisoned her but a freak of nature happened to kill her, like the sky breaking and falling.
HOST Still, they never married.
OXFORD The queen would never share power with anyone. To mollify him, she elevated her Robin to Earl of Leicester. Exercising her prerogative, the queen granted him many valuable estates, including some which had been in the de Vere family for generations and were to be part of my inheritance.
(OFFSTAGE Lord Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester was granted the lands and all the singular there appertaining in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, late in the inheritance of the Right Hon. John de Vere Earl of Oxford.)
OXFORD The situation was this. After my father's death and court case, the spoils were divided: Tyrell got my mother, Leicester got parts of my inheritance, and Cecil got me. I was so moved I wrote the poem, Loss of Good Name, signing it E. O.
HOST The affair between the queen and Leicester was well known.
OXFORD Enamored of him, she took him into her confidence much to Cecil's dismay. From that time on, Cecil and Leicester joined with the queen as quasi triumvirs, their modus operandi for mutual survival.
HOST They shared power with the queen?
OXFORD No, no, but they operated in common. Once, when Leicester tried to force her to act on his behalf, she cried, "God's death my lord, there will be but one mistress here and no master!"
HOST While in Cecil's household your maternal uncle, Arthur Golding, tutored you in the classics.
OXFORD I being more fortunate in that affinity. He was a classical scholar. I read the classics in Greek and Latin. In Italian, I read about the Italian Renaissance. He tutored me in the schooling required of a de Vere.
HOST In your time, England had its own renaissance, its language.
OXFORD The Italian Renaissance was primarily an artistic one. Our English Renaissance was an awakening of language, a literary renaissance. We tried the Italian model of phonetic spelling, words spelled as pronounced, but the same words were being spelled differently depending upon who was doing the pronouncing. Our multi-syllable words do not r-r-r-roll off the tongue with the same musical tempo as Italian. Even so, English has its advantages, using fewer and shorter words to express a same thought. We also created many new words using Greek and Latin roots.
HOST As we do today, creating new words for our software and internet.
OXFORD The which what?
HOST Our new scientific methods of communication. I've noted here that you and your uncle worked together translating several Latin classics including Ovid's Metamorphoses. What about the prurient subject matter? Your uncle was a Calvinist.
OXFORD Ovid's lack of morals didn't bother me but my uncle was hesitant to subscribe his name to my translations. Then, reconsidering he consented, reasoning it was to be a publication of classical scholarship. He was always pleased when, in my own writings, I sourced the Bible, prayer books, or classical ancient history.
HOST He dedicated to you his publication, The Histories of Trogus and Pompei, and to William Cecil his translation of Caesar's Commentaries. Speaking of books, Cecil's accounts show that you had a great interest in books. You ordered the Geneva Bible, Chaucer, Plutarch, Tully, Plato, several books in French, and several in Italian.
OXFORD All in preparation for my formal education.
HOST At 14 you received a degree from St. John's College, Cambridge.
OXFORD Cecil's alma mater. It was there I befriended Gabriel Harvey a writer, whom I patronized. One of my tutors there, Sir Thomas Smith a great classical scholar, enthralled me with his travels in Italy.
HOST At 16 you received a Master of Arts degree from Oxford. But about this time, you were acquiring lavish spending habits. Over two years, Cecil's accounts showed you spent £627 on apparel, rapiers, and daggers. In terms of today's purchasing power, that would be worth several hundred thousand dollars.
OXFORD Frugal Cecil scolded me for my profligacy. That is, for spending my own money. But in his fiduciary capacity, he didn't hesitate to take his commissions.
HOST You bought doublets of cambric, satin, canvas, satin black velvet hose, riding cloaks, girdles, fine Holland handkerchiefs, 10 pairs of Spanish leather shoes, 3 pairs slippers, velvet hat, taffeta hat, 2 pairs garters with silver ends, plume of feathers for a hat, etc.
OXFORD His scolding encouraged me to spend more on proper dress befitting a high-born gentlemen.
HOST At 17 you went off to Gray's Inn to study law. If you were interested in writing, why study law?
OXFORD Ever since the Windsor's sued me, I became interested in law. Besides, Cecil was a lawyer and claimed well-educated noblemen should be grounded in the law of the land.
HOST In your time, only "gentlemen of the blood" were admitted to the Inns of Court, but why Gray's Inn?
OXFORD Because it was Cecil's alma mater, only ½ mile from Cecil House, and known for its masks and plays. Trouping with my father's actors, I had some experience with masks and plays.
HOST In masks actors wear masks, other than that what's the difference between masks and plays.
OXFORD In plays actors are identified by their faces and the guises of their responses. If actors satirized to ridicule a prominent nobleman, they could be sued for libel. In masks actors wear masks to conceal their identities, thereby protecting themselves from retribution by the living persons being satirized or burlesqued. Masks are the portrayals in which one bears his soul under cover of entertainment, cover your face, expose your mind, release your inhibitions, attack with impunity your enemies.
HOST At Gray's Inn you became known for your literary and theatrical talents. You wrote and acted in several dramas and spent lavishly producing them.
OXFORD I assumed full financial responsibility for all my productions.
HOST But you also acquired a reputation for being flamboyant and a hot head with a bad temper.
OXFORD I did not tolerate dullards and fools.
HOST Also attending Gray's Inn was Philip Sidney. You and he would become two great court poets and rivals for the queen's attention.
OXFORD Court poets yes, rivals for the queen no. I was his social superior, closer to the queen.
HOST Once on leave from Gray's Inn, you quarreled with one of Cecil's undercooks.
OXFORD An obnoxious man, spying on me and 11 year old Anne Cecil. He was drunk. He began innocently by chiding me for the great cost of keeping my stable of 4 geldings. Assuming airs as my equal, he argued with me then lunged at me with a kitchen knife. I drew my rapier in self-defense.
HOST Running it clear through his thigh. He bled to death, dying the next day.
OXFORD If I had meant to kill him, I'd had pierced his heart. There was an inquest and, on my behalf, William Cecil rightly claimed "se defendendo", self defense. The charges against me were dismissed.
HOST Sometime after the inquest, the queen invited you to Hampton Court. Is it true she seduced you, a naive adolescent of 17?
OXFORD My initial shock was erased by her alabaster skin, long hair, and her broad white ivory smile. An agog virgin, I adored her. My boar of passion slew any resistance to her sexual aggression. Overcome by her expectation, she subdued me to love performance. I wrote a sonnet about my vacillating emotions, titled Love Thy Choice:
Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, my heart:
Who taught thy tongue the woeful words of plaint?
Who filled your eyes with tears of bitter smart:
Who gave thee grief and made thy joys so faint?
Who first did paint with colors pale thy face?
Who first did break they sleeps of quiet rest?
Above the rest in Court who gave thee grace?
Who made thee strive in honour to be best?
In constant truth to bide so firm and sure?
To scorn the world regarding but thy friends?
With patient mind each passion to endure?
In one desire to settle to the end?
Love then they choice wherein such choice thou bind
As nought but death shall ever change thy mind.
HOST At 19 you graduated from Gray's Inn but never practiced law.
OXFORD I directed my talents at writing and the theater.
HOST Your interest in literature and history were well known. Thomas Underdoune, poet and scholar, dedicated to you his Aethiopian History. His dedication chides you for being too much addicted to learning and knowledge.
OXFORD But my training in law endured throughout.
HOST In fact, you used legal procedures and phrases in more than half of your plays. Then as today, people resented lawyers.
OXFORD You mean "kill all the lawyers?"
HOST Something like that. About this time you got the news that your mother died.
OXFORD She had written to Cecil about some of my father's unknown debts. But again she never mentioned me.
HOST What about inheritance?
OXFORD Nothing from her.
HOST Later that year, 1569, the queen was confronted by the rebellion of Catholic Scots. She ordered Thomas Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex to suppress it.
OXFORD I admired Sussex. Since my father's death, he was my father figure. Itching for action, I immediately volunteered to serve under Sussex. To my surprise, the queen dispatched me to the northern border. We laid siege to Hume Castle, resulting in Lord Hume parleying for a truce. It was a successful campaign, but I felt somewhat restrained in killing Catholic Scots because my ancient ancestors were Catholic. Having won the battle, our delicately cameoed queen ordered many rebellious Scots hanged.
HOST There's a parallel between that northern rebellion and the one dramatized in Henry IV.
OXFORD Quite, based on my experience.
HOST On your return from Scotland, it was reported that you entered London like a victorious Roman general.
"The earl entered London with fourscore gentlemen in a livery of Reading tawny, and chains of gold about their necks before him; and 100 tall yeomen in the like livery to follow him, without chains, but all having his cognizance of the Blue Boar embroidered on their left shoulder".
That would be like 180 stretch limousines tying up traffic for miles, certainly a dramatic display of Tudor nobility.
OXFORD Limousines?
HOST Our version of your horse and carriage. Now we come to the end of youth and beginning of manhood. In 1571 your were 21 and officially entered the queen's service and House of Lords.
OXFORD (stands drawing his rapier) You see before you Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, heredity Lord Great Chamberlain of England in service to his dread Lord the king. On the day of coronation said Earl shall dress the king in all his royal apparel, and at the banquet table offer the king his tasting cup, and while the king feasts, present him with a wash basin of flowered water and towels. Furthermore, on that day said earl in procession shall wear for his robes 40 yards of Italian crimson velvet, thereafter with ancestral privilege have all the preferments of his noble progenitors, and all the fees and profits due his esteemed office, together with the freedom to entertain the king at court and elsewhere (walks about pompously, scabbards his sword, and sits).
HOST Well, you said hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain.
OXFORD In 1068 Henry I, son of William the Conqueror, made Aubrey de Vere Lord Great Chamberlain and we have held that office ever since.
HOST That office serves the king's personal needs but your monarch was queen, not king.
OXFORD My services were still required during high state functions. Obviously, my dresser duties were not appropriate, the queen having her ladies-in-waiting, her maids-of-honor.
HOST You mentioned the freedom to entertain.
OXFORD Part of my official court duties. The queen knew of my father's acting company and was aware of my productions at Gray's Inn, so she encouraged me to continue my interest in drama and the theater.
HOST It was reported the queen frequently would send for you to dance with her and, because you were an accomplished musician, play duets with her on the virginal.
OXFORD Quite so.
HOST It was also reported you dazzled the queen, that you took the court by storm. You were the most eligible bachelor in England - artistic, brilliant, gallant, pedigreed, rich, witty. You were particularly welcomed by her maids-of-honor, reminiscent of Ophelia's impression of Hamlet:
(OFFSTAGE The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword. ... The glass of fashion and the mold of form, the observed of all observers... At court there is no man of life and agility in every respect but Oxford, the most distinguished earl at court, a great dancer and musician, first rate scholar, poet, playwright, one of arresting presence, of high birth, of fashioned celebrity. But also supercilious, one of disagreeable temper, daring, courageous, and at the same time effeminate.)
HOST It was also reported that when the queen presented you to her court, she threw it an "apple of discord". Some courtiers grumbled that you were absorbing all her leisure time, that you were arrogant and irreverent.
OXFORD Nonsense, we discussed our mutual interests. I told her of my hope for adventure. I repeatedly requested military service but she always denied me. Later, I asked for permission to travel the Continent. She denied me again, cooing that she preferred my personage at court.
HOST In May at Westminster, you entered the jousting tournament held in honor of the queen. Attracting great attention was your livery of expensive Italian crimson velvet in which you were the red knight. One of the contestants was Christopher Hatton, captain of the queen's bodyguards, and one of your court rivals for the queen's attention.
OXFORD The grand prize to be awarded to the contestant who "breaketh the most speares as they ought to be broken, or delivers blows of the prescribed kind, or beareth a man down with the stroke of a spear".
HOST During three days of jousting, you performed far above expectations, scoring upset victories over much favored contestants including Hatton.
OXFORD Due to my father's training in horsemanship. I had that tournament in mind when I described the lists at Coventry. I believe in Richard II or maybe Henry IV?
HOST It was reported that you, exuberant after each hit, brandished your broken spear to the acclaim of spectators who shouted "Oxford, shake spear; Oxford, shake spear". Why did you shake your broken spear?
OXFORD It just happened. Exuberant in victory I suppose. Spectators loved it.
HOST Defeated contestants accused you of taunting, of showing off in a most unsportsmanly manner.
OXFORD My eyes were not on them but on the queen; she was applauding.
HOST Thereafter, Gabriel Harvey called you a "shake spear" and our "Will shake spear", but why Will?
OXFORD A play on words. Among writers, Will was a common sobriquet for poets. Oxford who will shake spear in victory and Will the poet. In either case, having won the tournament, the queen presented me with the first prize, a silver tablet inlaid with diamonds. Hatton's prize was a chain with gold bell, which he tinkled about at court to draw attention to himself.
HOST The queen praised you for your tournament win, making you the court's leading luminary. She called you her Turk.
OXFORD Those courtiers I defeated became my immediate enemies. They spread rumors I was a dandy, a braggart, a mavis tweeting my wins in the queen's ear, having undue influence on her. What, me as Pistol shooting Falstaff bullets? The queen never granted me any favors and denied my requests.
HOST It seems you had a polarizing reputation, attracting envy or admiration. There was a long-standing rumor that you and the queen were more than just acquaintances.
OXFORD We were alike in temperament and intellect. She had a keen mind, quick wit, and a fencer's skill at repartee. She was multilingual and easily transited to Italian. On those occasions I'd respond in Italian, much to the annoyance of those English-only courtiers. She was interested in the arts, drama, and music. She and I enjoyed puns and word play. She was well versed in classical scholarship and wrote with a flourishing Italianate penmanship. She loved riding, sports, and bowling. We had much in common. I was attracted to her beauty, wit, and intellect. Caesar captivated by Cleopatra.
HOST Is it possible that your mother's aloofness made you susceptible to the queen's charms?
OXFORD Perhaps. The queen was amused by my flamboyance and quick wit but chided me for my arrogance and hot temper. Being frugal, even parsimonious, she scolded me for my spendthrift habits. Those reproofs pleased my court enemies.
HOST It was reported that her maids-of-honor were pursuing you, the most eligible bachelor in England, and that you dallied with several much to the queen's displeasure.
OXFORD Quite so, but her court was constantly engaged in episodic sexual exploits. After all, she set the example.
HOST Burghley curtailed your court dalliances by remarking to the queen that it was time you married.
OXFORD Acting in place of his fatherless royal wards, Burghley had the prerogative to arrange marriages. He suggested to the queen I marry his daughter Anne.
(OFFSTAGE (Burghley's voice) It's true, I rejected several marriage proposals for Anne's hand in favor of Oxford. I rejected Edward Manners, Earl of Rutland. I rejected Oxford's moral superior Sir Philip Sidney. Instead, I offered my saintly and virtuous Tannikin to the rich, reprobate court celebrity in the hope of grandfathering the 18th Earl of Oxford. But it's well known that I disapprove of his interest in the theater, his lewd friends, his gambling, and spendthrift habits. He spends as if his inheritance and income were infinite.)
HOST The most powerful man in England suggesting to the queen, the most powerful person in England, that you marry his daughter. Sounds like an order.
OXFORD The queen readily approved. A suggestion from her is an order. I begged her for an appointment abroad or military service, but she refused saying she wanted me at court where she had ready access to my presence and entertainments.
HOST Burghley proposed you marry his daughter in spite of the fact he scorned your interest in the arts and theater, and that you were a spendthrift?
OXFORD Our personalities were antithetical.
HOST It was well known that Burghley had a gift for avoiding danger. So why did he want his daughter to marry you?
OXFORD Why indeed. My birthright made me the foremost earl in rank and potentially one of the richest. Marriage would assure his daughter's future and expand his already considerable influence upon the queen. I grew up with Anne, and while she was a virtuous girl, I didn't love her. She was more my sister than lover. At court I muttered to the queen "I don't want to marry her". When the queen suggested the marriage a second time, I strongly protested "But she's a commoner". The queen was well aware that a nobleman cannot be forced to marry a commoner. At court there was a stillness, a deathly silence lest someone interfere with the queen's thoughtful response. They were gathering around me, my enemies, like a pack of dogs sniffing at an injured fox.
HOST You injured?
OXFORD When the queen speaks you listen and when the queen suggests you do.
HOST So what happened?
OXFORD She made him a nobleman, elevated him to Baron Burghley, miraculously converting his mercantile blood from common to noble without that benefiicial courage required on the battle field. Henceforth, I was to call him Lord Burghley, his wife and daughter Anne the Ladies Burghley. Titles are fungible; they are given, canceled, transferred, only the land remains. I still had my lands, my warranty against the deracination from my noble lineage and the gaucheries of commoners.
HOST You agreed to the marriage?
OXFORD No.
HOST You refused?
OXFORD (rising, holding the emblem hanging from his neck ribbon, approaches the host) You see this? This is my family emblem, a boar. When a boar is gored it gets mad, it snorts with its bristles up, it foams at the mouth, a terrible beast, a formidable threat. When you gore a boar, beware!
HOST You threatened the queen?
OXFORD Don't be a fool! Bowing in low obeisance I gave her my answer. I farted.
HOST You didn't!
OXFORD I did. "Salve regina", hail to the queen. I bowed and backed out from the astounded, silent court. Thereafter, courtiers and maids-of-honor spread the word of my impending marriage and rumors about it were flying about. (returns to chair)
(OFFSTAGE The Earl of Oxford hath gotten him a wife - or at least a wife hath caught him; this is Mistress Anne Cecil; whereunto the queen hath given her consent, and the which hath caused great weeping, wailing, and sorrowful cheer of those who had hoped to have that golden day. Thus you may see whilst that some triumph with olive branches, others follow the chariot with willow garlands.)
OXFORD Later, moving around England, I managed to postpone the marriage several months. Eventually the queen sent her advocate to fetch me. As a former royal ward, I had to purchase my marriage from the Court of Wards by paying Burghley a handsome marriage fee. Imagine, I had to pay my future father-in-law for the hymeneal privilege of penetrating his sweet Tannikin. Either that or pay him the staggering fine of £5,000 for rejecting her.
HOST So the marriage planned for September took place in December.
OXFORD Yes, the 21 year old reprobate earl married his 15 year old virgin bride.
HOST Reminds me of Romeo and Juliet.
OXFORD But unlike Romeo, my surrender was one of convenience. We were married at Westminster Abbey, attended by the queen and her entire retinue, the French Ambassador, and many other dignitaries.
HOST Is it true you absented yourself from the marriage bed? Rumor has it that the morning after, for consolation, a weeping Anne ran to her mother?
OXFORD I was young, proud, petulant. I defaulted on my conjugal obligation, holding that hymeneal pleasure in abeyance. I was determined not to pay the marriage fee or consummate a marriage of convenience forced upon me. Well, after some months, I paid part of the marriage fee. I had to pay for my virginal, virtuous wife as if I were at the Mermaid Tavern. One night, quite drunk, there in my bed was a young woman. Our marriage was consummated.
HOST A remarkable similarity to All's Well That Ends Well in which the king proposes the marriage between the nobleman Bertram, once his royal ward, and the commoner Helena. Bertram strongly objects. The king insists and eventually they marry but Bertram vows "I will not bed her" and flees to Italy without consummating the marriage. Of course, Bertram is you.
OXFORD There he falls in love with Diana. One night he goes to bed thinking Diana is there waiting for him but it's his virgin wife Helena who gets pregnant. It's the bed trick straight out of Boccaccio's Decameron. The same trick I used also in Measure for Measure inserting Mariana in Angelo's bed.
(1571-1581)
OXFORD Some weeks after I had bedded my wife, I learned Burghley and the queen were again conspiring against me.
HOST Another conspiracy?
OXFORD In order to protect his daughter from my profligacy, court intrigues, and assumed scandalous behavior the queen gave Burghley, my father-in-law, fiduciary control over my estates and lands. Imagine, the 17th Earl of Oxford ascended from one of the most noble family in England counting among his many assets deeded by kings castles, manors, vast estates, entire villages had to ask his father-in-law for money.
HOST On another matter, there was brewing an ominous event imposing itself on your personal problems. Because of his sympathy for Catholics your uncle Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, got himself involved in the Ridolfi plot.
OXFORD Allegedly involved in the plot. Recall that a papal bull excommunicated the queen. The Spanish hatched a plot in which the duke would marry Mary Queen of Scots, a Catholic, overthrow our Protestant queen, and restore to England the Church of Rome. Burghley and Sir Francis Walsingham, head of the queen's secret service, maintained a band of vile informers, spies. They uncovered the plot, claiming the duke was secretly corresponding with Mary Queen of Scots. The duke and others were apprehended and when questioned by Burghley and the queen the duke denied the charges. The duke claimed he was still a Protestant, a patriot, faithful to the queen and she knew it. However, the queen charged him with rebellion. He was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower along with others, including the 2nd Earl of Southampton. All were prosecuted by none other than Burghley, my father-in-law. I argued with him often and hotly, but he remained adamant in his certainty of the plot and the duke's involvement.
HOST Meantime, it was reported Ralph Lane informed Burghley you were planning an escape for the duke.
OXFORD Another rumor, another lie. I pleaded with the queen to spare my uncle. She gave no answer. She never made quick decisions. The bulldog Burghley persisted with his fistful of death warrants begging the queen to sign them. She was loath to sign the duke's death warrant because of his nearness of blood. He was England's last duke. Burghley was urging her to sign; I begging her not to sign. When she got the nerve to sign his death warrant, she rescinded it. This went on for weeks and months. She vacillated between her chief minister Burghley and me her young luminary at court, her favorite dancer, and musician. She was unable to decide. To relieve the queen of her enduring agony, the wily Burghley convinced the queen to convene a special session of Parliament, which done, called for the duke's head. That experience revolted me, turning me against court intrigues, politicians, and those who ruthlessly contend for power.
HOST Burghley?
OXFORD In June 1572 my uncle, England's last duke was beheaded along with others. The queen, an unswerving Protestant, was not above depriving Catholics or atheists of their heads. Fortunately, the 2nd Earl of Southampton was released and placed under house arrest. After my uncle was beheaded, I devoted more time to literature. I refused to sleep with my wife, daughter of the man who prosecuted my uncle and had him beheaded. Lady Burghley tried to instigate a servant's revolt in my own household. When she failed, she again removed my wife from Vere House her manor and I moved to the Savoy.
HOST History records that the duke was not the only de Vere to meet an untimely death.
OXFORD Or suffer the malice of the crown. My historic plays interweave the lives of the Earls of Oxford and royalty. In retrospect those plays of unending wars, battles, killings, lies, treasons, and intrigues were the interminable struggle for land and power. Their portrayals make Roman emperors benefactors bequeathing to Romans bread and circuses. We learned to play the game from them.
HOST Meanwhile in Paris the Catholic monster, Queen Catherine de Medici, ordered the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestants. You wrote to Burghley about it. Part of that letter reads: "on whose tragedies we have a number of French Aeneases in this city that tell of their own overthrows with tears in their eyes, a piteous thing to hear but a cruel and far more grievous thing we must deem it them to see". You allude to the phrase "tears in their eyes" in several of your plays.
OXFORD Derived from Dido's tale of the fall of Troy, of the grief and suffering of the defeated Trojans, their loss of lands, titles, inheritance. I was so moved that I volunteered to lead an expeditionary force on behalf of Protestants but the queen again denied me military command. It appeared I would never get the opportunity to prove my mettle in battle.
HOST That year Bartholomew Clerke, your former tutor at Oxford published his translation, from Italian to Latin, of Castiglione's Il Cortegiano, The Courtier. He dedicated it to you, and you displayed your great literary skill by writing the Latin preface to it. You broke with class tradition in true maverick style by identifying yourself in print as:
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
Viscount Bulbeck and Baron Scales and Baldesmere
to the Reader - Greeting
OXFORD Yes, and prominent conservatives at court were much displeased that I identified myself.
HOST Why did you?
OXFORD Because I wanted to let them know that I was the English version of Castiglione's Italian courtier. Without me there would be no Hamlet. Hamlet is the courtier, the Prince, his persona the essence of the coexistence of daring courage, learning, and gentility.
HOST Meaning you and Hamlet are one.
OXFORD Precisely.
HOST But another Italian, Niccolo Machiavelli, wrote the Courtier's opposite, the Prince.
OXFORD The Courtier exalts the manners and mind of the noblesse oblige. The Prince, which I also read in its original Italian, tells of evil human nature in politics. Later in Henry VI, I thought of Gloucester scheming for the crown vowing "to set the murderous Machiavel to school".
HOST Meanwhile Burghley built a huge mansion to accommodate visits by the queen.
OXFORD Grown rich on revenues from perquisites, the Court of Wards, sinecurs, commissions on selling my land and estates, he built a huge mansion at Theobalds in Hertfordshire. Its rooms were modeled after Hampton Court to accommodate the queen when she visited. He garnished it with expansive, manicured gardens bedecked with 12 marble statues of Roman emperors with himself, of course, as chief consul to his emperor the queen.
HOST It was reported that at court Burghley's abstemious attendance upon the queen deviated to fulsome indulgence at Theobalds.
OXFORD Burghley's adherence to Protestant moral code would never enable him to stoop to such fawning attendance.
HOST When the queen and her retinue visited him you did not attend. The queen's favorite courtier and Brughley's son-in-law not in attendance?
OXFORD I knew my wife would be there. My marital problems being what they were, I felt no obligation to be present. I knew that my absence would be a great affront to the queen and Burghley. Still, I was determined not to attend.
HOST Speaking of the queen, rumors persisted you were one of her lovers.
OXFORD I performed my duty as Lord Great Chamberlain by entertaining the queen.
HOST What about your wife?
OXFORD We were estranged. Alarmed at the 40 year old queen's explicit affection for me, Lady Burghley hastily removed her daughter from London. She was a shrew, a meddlesome amazon whose chamber pot was emblazoned with a lion rampant.
HOST What about Lord Burghley?
OXFORD Discreetly mum.
(OFFSTAGE My Lord of Oxford is lately grown into great credit, for the Queen's Majesty delighteth more in his personage and in his dancing and valiantness than any other. If it were not for his fickle head, he would pass any of them shortly. My Lady Burghley, unwisely, has declared herself jealous, which is come to the queen's ear, whereat she has been not a little offended with her, but now she is reconciled again. At all these love matters Burghley, my Lord Treasurer, winketh and will not meddle in any manner.)
HOST In addition to Leicester and you, there was another rival for the queen's attention. That was Christopher Hatton, tall and handsome he caught the queen's eye and danced his way into her favor in much the same way you had. In fact, a lady at court remarked that: "Hatton had more recourse to Her Majesty in her Privy Chamber than reason would suffer if she were so virtuous and well inclined as some noiseth".
OXFORD It was known at court the queen had pet names for her lovers. She called Leicester her gypsy, Hatton her mouton or sheep, and me her boar or Turk.
HOST Were the three of you time-sharing the queen’s bedchamber?
OXFORD Come now, high-born gentlemen do not answer questions of intimacy or respond to such prurient probes.
HOST One more question on this matter. It was said that she preferred you because of your common interests, and that Leicester and Hatton were spreading vicious rumors about you hoping that Burghley would poison the queen's mind against you.
OXFORD One time at court, during a scintillating verbal riposte, I dared better the queen. She playfully called me a bastard, referring to the Windsor's suit against me. At that moment embarrassed to shame, I became wary of her, ever on my guard against her flaring disparagements not only of me but others.
HOST In the summer of that year 1572 you accompanied the queen on her summer progress to Warwicke Castle. There you played a leading role in staging a spectacular mock battle for her entertainment.
OXFORD The battle of Bosworth Field in which the 13th Earl of Oxford led Lancaster troops to victory, making it possible for her to become a Tudor queen. It was my rejoinder to her sarcastic bastard remark. It was also my reminder that if she continued denying me military service, I would command and stage my own battle, a mock of her.
HOST When you were 23 your uncle Arthur Golding published Calvin's version of the Psalms of David, with dedication to you. Also dedicated to you was Thomas Twyne's Breviary of Britain. Did these dedications result from your patronage?
OXFORD Didn't patronize my uncle or Twyne.
HOST You did patronize your writer friends, leasing for them apartments in the Savoy. I understand the Savoy was a decrepit castle rebuilt to accommodate prominent persons, writers, and university wits.
OXFORD Quite so, I had my own apartments there.
HOST You were overheard saying "the concurrence of affection between me and the queen set my literary star ablaze".
OXFORD I may have exalted in a moment of revelry.
HOST Now to a really dramatic matter, in fact quite bizarre. While travelling near Gad's Hill on the Gravesend-Rochester road, two of Burghley's men accused three of your men of a raging demeanor, assaulting them, firing their muskets charged with bullets, barely missing them, while camouflaged in nearby bushes you shouted commands.
OXFORD Burghley's men were spying on me. The queen having denied my requests for military service, I directed my men in a mock military assault against his spies. No one was hurt.
HOST Why were they spying on you?
OXFORD To report any scandal involving me or my writers, supposedly to protect his daughter. The two men complained to Burghley but nothing came of my high spirited prank.
HOST Scandals had a habit of following you.
OXFORD Like Burghley spies.
HOST You inserted your Gad's Hill adventure in Henry IV. Prince Hal, Falstaff, and 3 rogues engage in a robbery near Gad's Hill.
OXFORD Except that my men never robbed Burghley's men.
HOST Later that year was published a collection of poetry titled A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres, the first anthology of early Elizabethan poems compiled for "learned readers". Scholars claim it contains verses by Shakespeare in his early twenties and is prefaced by a letter from an anonymous author subscribed "from my lodging near the Strand". At that time you were 23 and lived near the Strand.
OXFORD Yes to those assumptions.
(OFFSTAGE Stratfordian scholars couldn't possibly believe the preface referred to their man from Stratford. At that time, Shaxpere was only 6 years old.)
HOST The major part of Flowres is a prose narrative, the Adventures of Master F. I., written by George Gascoigne. It is a story about the clandestine amorous adventures of Master F. I. and Mistress , presumably the queen. The story is interspersed with some of your poems.
OXFORD My contribution to Flowres was to embarrass Hatton because of his pretentious love for the queen and his vicious rumors about me. The whole being a satire of Hatton confessing his love for the queen. Some poems are signed "si fortunatus infoelix", the fortunate unfortunate as Hatton surely was.
HOST Did you use George Gascoigne as a pseudonym?
OXFORD Partly, I allowed some of my poems to be published under his name.
HOST That year another book, Cardanus Comforte, was published and dedicated to you.
OXFORD By my good friend Thomas Bedingfield. He translated from Italian Giralamo Cardano's De Consolatione, originally written because there were so many unfortunate men needing consolation. Bedingfield retitled it Cardanus Comfort.
HOST You sponsored its publication and wrote its Latin preface, which contains many phrases found in your plays and sonnets. There are many allusions to Hamlet, including the great soliloquy. Was it the book Hamlet was pretending to read when baiting Polonius?
OXFORD My thinking was that Hamlet's book should be the condensed versions of The Courtier and Cardanus Comfort.
HOST Now to a really bizarre rumor. The buzz at court was that the queen appeared flushed, whether from cosmetics or other cause, and that under her wide hoops she was pregnant with your son, and that she did not convene court as usual.
OXFORD Rumor had it the queen, unexpectedly ensnared by nature, painted herself to detract from the deformity under her bellowed skirts which secreted a dynasty in utero. Months later, during delivery of a son, she cried out for Diana's help. Strangely coincident with that rumored birth, the Countess of Southampton delivered a son who died at birth, her dead newborn being conveniently replaced by the queen's changeling wrapped in royal swaddling.
HOST That rumor became credible when no records could be found of the infant Southampton's birth, baptism, or godparents. Normally, the birth of an earl's son would be well recorded and his baptism sponsored by the monarch, in this case the queen herself. How can you account for those breaches of royal and noble etiquette?
OXFORD I cannot.
HOST That infant, was Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southmapton.
OXFORD Grown to a fine and handsome young man.
HOST But what about the persistent rumor that he was your son?
OXFORD Southampton my son? You importune me as did my writers, "Tell us Will, is it true, is he your son?" The queen never confided her condition to me.
HOST The play Richard III alludes to a painted lady. Would that be the queen using excessive makeup and dress to conceal the deformity of her pregnancy?
OXFORD One of many interpretations. The queen would never admit that one of her courtiers imposed his sperm upon her royal egg, rendering her powerless against nature's gestation. To think that a man had the power to deform her against her royal will.
HOST She could have aborted the fetus.
OXFORD Perhaps abortion, or lack of it, was the cause of her growing hostility toward me. It's all speculation!
HOST There were those who believed the rumor. Nashe, one of your own writers, dedicated his poem Choice of Valentines to Southampton. One verse calls him:
The fairest bud the red rose ever bore
OXFORD That one verse employs a metaphor and two puns. The queen being the Tudor red rose, my name E. Vere being ever, and my family crest a boar being she bore, she birthed.
HOST Isn't that proof enough the changeling was your son?
OXFORD Proof of a poet's imagination. I dealt with that rumor in several of my plays, A Midsummer-Night's Dream and The Merchant of Venice. Recall that in Midsummer, Queen Titania refuses to give up her little changeling boy to her estranged King Oberon. In The Merchant of Venice Launcelot says, "truth will come to light, murder cannot be hid long; a man's son may, but in the end, truth will out".
HOST And a pun on your family name. A motto the Clintons should adopt.
OXFORD Who?
HOST Our president and his wife. Later that year, you edited and published George Gascoigne's autobiographical poem The Delectable History of Sundry Adventures Passed by Dan Bartholomew of Bathe.
OXFORD A narrative poem describing Dan's adventures while travelling from London to Bath, whose eastern edge laps the Avon River.
HOST The second stanza suggests Dan's real name is being concealed:
His name I hide, and yet for this discourse,
Let call his name Dan Bartholomew of Bathe ...
Were you camouflaged as Dan Bartholomew, another of your pseudonyms?
OXFORD Perhaps.
HOST Did you and Gascoigne collaborate?
OXFORD It was inevitable during editing.
HOST The poem ends with the Italian phrase "fato non fortuna".
OXFORD Yes, "fate not fortune", one's destiny may not include success or recognition of one's work.
HOST You were known to have had wild parties with your lewd friends, your actors and writers.
(OFFSTAGE (Anne's voice) Dear father, my erstwhile Lord doth entertain his lewd friends in our home, drinking and carousing from evening to morning. On one occasion one of them kept me out of my Lord's bedchamber, sending me away, telling me my Lord was not to be disturbed. Thereafter, my Lord doth abandon me for his library wherein he is wedded to his pen and parchment.)
OXFORD The Burghley's were constantly complaining about me doing this or that, a serial melodrama, the solfatara of newly titled nobility.
(OFFSTAGE (Burghley's voice) My son-in-law, the foremost earl of England, socializes not with his own kind but with his social inferiors, lewd associates, patronized writers, and vagabond actors. While he is blessed with great artistic and literary talents, he has not put them to good use. He has no ability for money and is always in debt. He keeps several companies of actors at great expense but never accepts money for his work. His personal extravagance and dissolute habits have brought him disrepute at court. He continually vexes the queen, obstructing preferments for his advancement. If he spent as much time and money on his family, he would do much to relieve his marital problems. I tell you it's disgraceful, utterly shameful, that my virtuous Tannikin should be witness to such comportment by her lord.)
HOST On to a another matter, you were known to be sympathetic to votaries of Catholicism, feudal systems, and punctilios supporting established hierarchy. In fact, you were accused of complicity with a Catholic Spanish agent to restore the Church of Rome.
OXFORD Lies! I may have expressed some sympathy for Catholics but I wanted to keep my head where it was. My late uncle's fate being foremost in my mind. What I wanted was to travel the Continent but the queen denied all my requests.
HOST Ralph Lane, who previously reported that you had tried to help your uncle to escape prosecution was now reporting to Burghley that your hot, unstable mind was scheming to provide the Spanish with men and ships for use against the Protestants in the Netherlands.
OXFORD Not true! Lane said nothing about Burghley who was secretly dealing with the Spanish for trading advantages. By the way, it's the same Lane the queen sent to America as the first governor of the failed Roanoke Island.
HOST But you fled to Brussels without the queen's consent, giving credence to the rumor.
OXFORD To get away from the lies, the Burghley's meddling into my marriage, and the queen's denials of my requests to travel the Continent.
HOST Furious at your insubordination, the queen called you "an impetuous young idiot" and sent your friend Bedingfield to fetch you.
OXFORD Her denial galled me because she had just given Philip Sidney permission to travel the continent. I got my revenge in All's Well That Ends Well, when Bertram who was refused permission to travel complains "the king had sent other young lords to Italy".
HOST When you returned from Brussels, she suspended you from court.
OXFORD She humiliated me in the presence of my peers. I begged Burghley to intercede on my behalf. Fortunately, he and my wife appealed to the queen. After several months, the queen relented restoring me and my good name to court. Being grateful, I promised her a new entertainment when we visited Woodstock. There, I presented her with the Greek tale of Hermetes the Hermit, a parodic tale replete with masked references to state authority.
HOST I understand she was delighted at your portrayal as the hermit.
OXFORD True. Later, with my mother-in-law constantly interfering in my marriage and debtors hounding me, I again requested the queen's permission to travel the Continent. A most proficient procrastinator, her answer was not forthcoming. I learned that her hesitance was due in part to Burghley advising her to reject my request because travel was dangerous, harm might befall me, meaning no 18th earl for him to grandfather.
HOST So you just waited around for her permission?
OXFORD During the wait, I contracted to build a manor on the site of an old Roman villa in Woodstock.
HOST Why Woodstock?
OXFORD I owned the land and, I suppose, it was my way of connecting to my Roman ancestors.
HOST I thought your ancestors came over with William the Conqueror?
OXFORD Yes, but before that from Italy.
HOST Scholars say the name Veer is Danish.
OXFORD Scholars? Scholars say it? If it is, my Danish ancient ancestors went south to the sunny climes of Italy. My progenitors were administrators in Rome's Western Empire, in Gaul's Aquatani. There the inflected Italian di Verre (Vairray), became the French de Vere, pronounced de Vair. It’s the Italian Verre without the final e, Vairay and Vair, near homophones you see. By the way verre in Italian means boar. It’s my family emblem, see (holds up emblem hanging from neck ribbon).
HOST That being so, how did the de Vere's get to England?
OXFORD Aubrey de Vere, a superb horseman in newly designed saddle and stirrups, joined his countryman William the Conqueror. He fought at his side in the battle of Hastings. The Conqueror, crowned King William I, granted Aubrey huge tracts of land in Kensinsgton and Essex. His son Aubrey built Castle Hedingham. His religious grandson, Aubrey 3rd, was given his choice of earldoms and he chose Oxford. Other kings made other appointments and grants to the de Vere's. The Earls of Oxford fought beside their kings in England and France.
HOST If lands were granted at the whim of kings, what happened to the people already living there?
OXFORD Kings did not grant lands on whims. One had to fight by his king's side, protecting him, killing his enemies. If he survived the king would normally reward him with grants of land. Those grants, royal proclamations, gave them authority over the granted lands. Noblemen have all the appurtenances of their high birth lineage, education, crests, coats-of-arms, mottoes.
HOST But what about the people living on those lands?
OXFORD Commoners clamor for their meager wants such as clothing, food, and shelter. Keep in mind that commoners did not own land or hire laborers.
HOST Because kings granted that land to noblemen.
OXFORD Commoners survived by their lord's compassion and largesse, not by their lord's depravity. You should understand that most commoners were illiterate, some didn't even have last names. They were grateful for their lord’s patronage and would even fight to death to protect his lands. What would they have without them?
HOST Were you hostile towards them?
OXFORD No, no, but I did want to distinguishing myself from them for we each had reciprocal obligations. Commoners did not fight beside their king. For a few shillings, some commoners would rob or even kill you. How can you equate commoners to noblemen?
HOST Your aristocratic prospective is certainly evident in your plays.
OXFORD In 1068 Henry I appointed Aubrey de Vere Earl of Oxford and Lord Great Chamberlain. King John retained that appointment for other earls and made the 4th earl Steward of Royal Forests in Essex County. Succeeding earls were appointed Lord Great Chamberlain. The 7th earl was buried at Colne Priory built by a previous de Vere. His vast estates and lands stretched out over 10 counties. Those grants made me foremost among peers, descended from the longest unbroken line of noblemen in England. The 8th earl commanded Edward II's forces in France. The 9th earl had a close, should I say intimate, relationship with Richard II.
HOST That earl literally served under King Richard II.
OXFORD In addition to our title of hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain, King Richard appointed him Knight and Custodian of the Town and Castle of Colchester and the Marquis of Dublin. He was killed by a wild boar while visiting France. Richard had his body returned to England, honoring him with lavish state funeral rites. King Richard's homosexuality, the confiscation of certain noblemen’s lands, and their imprisonment so enraged other nobles they eventually deposed him.
HOST In your play Richard II, the 9th Earl isn't portrayed and their homosexuality glossed over.
OXFORD For obvious reasons.
HOST But the town Oxford is mentioned 6 times to allude to their relationship.
OXFORD Quite so.
HOST Yet, you alluded to homosexuality in Troilus and Cressida.
OXFORD Appropriate to the plot.
HOST Richard II is a play about deposing a monarch, a very sensitive subject to an autocratic queen like Elizabeth. Any other playwright would have been imprisoned or worse for writing such a play. Yet, you wrote it having apparent immunity.
OXFORD As Lord Great Chamberlain, the queen offered me some protection provided I didn't anger her. To continue, the 11th earl had an important command in the battle of Agincourt, fighting at the side of Henry V. In Henry VI the 12th earl plays a prominent role because he led the king's Lancaster troops against Yorkists in the War of Roses. They lost and the victorious Edward of York, becoming King Edward IV, had the 12th earl and his older son executed. It's dangerous to fight by the side of a losing king. But the earl's younger son, the 13th earl, saved himself by escaping to France.
HOST Years later he returned to avenge his father.
OXFORD The 13th earl returned to lead Lancaster’s troops in the battle of Bosworth Field. In this battle Lancasters defeated Yorkists and that victory established the Tudor dynasty beginning with the crowning of Henry VII. Moreover, the king privileged the 13th earl godfather of his son, the future King Henry VIII.
HOST The father of your queen.
OXFORD Now here's the rub. When Henry VII visited Castle Hedingham, the 13th earl gathered a large welcoming party. When the king saw the earl's large welcoming party of retainers, he claimed they were supernumerary and a threat to his royal authority. Exercising a legal technicality, the king fined the 13th earl £10,000 for exceeding the prescribed number of retainers allowed a nobleman. A most dastardly act by a thankless king whose war hero and loyal subject intended only a hearty welcome. That obscene fine was the beginning of the earl's financial ruin. Exacerbating the indignity, Leicester's grandfather was the king's extortionist lawyer who collected the fine. The Leicester clan amassed its great fortune collecting fines from unfortunate noblemen such as the 13th.earl.
HOST So what began as a royal visit...
OXFORD Ended in treachery! That event so affected me that I alluded to the earl's loss in Hamlet who was deprived of the crown, and again in King Lear who was stripped of his knights. Well, so be it for much ado about something.
HOST Noticeably absent from your historic plays is a play for that same king, Henry VII, why?
OXFORD Obviously, would you memorialize on stage an ungrateful king who punished his war hero, the one who helped crown him king thereby establishing the Tudor dynasty?
HOST And your father, the 16th earl?
OXFORD Hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain under Henry VIII. He distinguished himself in France in the Battle of Boulogne. You know the rest of my family’s history.
HOST When you were 25, the queen finally gave you permission to travel the Continent.
OXFORD But first, Burghley had me settle on a suitable allowance for my wife, the Countess Anne. Then with my attendants, I sailed for France. After a tour of Paris, I passed through the Rhineland and went to Strasbourg to visit the Protestant leader Sturmius. That spring I left Strasbourg for the land from which mighty Rome ruled. I departed for sunny Italy.
(OFFSTAGE)
I overtook, coming from Italy,
In Germany, a great a famous Earl
Of England; the most goodly fashion'd man
I ever saw: from head to foot in form
Rare and most absolute; he had a face
Like one of the most ancient honor'd Romans
From whence his noblest family was deriv’d;
He was beside of spirit passing great,
Valiant and learn'd, and liberal as the sun,
Spoke and writ sweetly, of learned subjects,
Or of the discipline of public weals;
And 'twas the Earl of Oxford.
OXFORD For me, Italy represented classical antiquity, the Roman Empire, the Church of Rome in which previous Earls of Oxford had been devotees, the Italian Renaissance. That is:
…to see fair Padua, nursery of the arts,
I am arriv'd for fruitful Lombardy,
The pleasant garden of great Italy,...
Here let us breathe, and haply institute
A course of learning and ingenious studies...
and so on.
HOST I believe from the Shrew? Several vignettes come to us from your travels in Venice and ....
OXFORD In Venice the Commedia dell'Arte satirized me in its performance of the Tirade of the Tournament. They claimed I was such a good sport they honored me with the Horn of Astolf. According to folk lore, it had enchanting consequences if its possessor shook it like a spear, another shake spear you see.
HOST You continued down Italy’s boot to Rome.
OXFORD I lingered at the Pantheon to pay tribute to the immortal city of my ancestors. Standing before the statue of Augustus, father of Rome's prophesied destiny of great renown, I noted the inscription SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romanus - the Senate and People of Rome. Then strolling along a bank of the Tiber, I imagined senile senator's independent and naughty wives swimming naked in its cool waters, while their young lovers and voyeurs mumbled mirabile visu.
HOST I don't know that one.
OXFORD Wonderful to behold.
HOST And then Naples? What about the characteristic nasal twang of the Neapolitan dialect?
OXFORD If I correctly recall, I inserted it in Othello. I have Casio say to the musicians,
"Why masters have your instruments been in Naples, that they speak i'th'nose thus?"
HOST Why did you include that, sounds like a throwaway line?
OXFORD I was enthralled with the peculiarities of the Neapolitan dialect contrasted with the pure Tuscan tongue. Obviously, Magna Graecia influenced the Neapolitan dialect.
HOST Naples is the setting for The Tempest.
OXFORD In which Prospero tells his daughter it was the king of Naples who cast him out to sea, rescued there by the noble Neapolitan Gonzalo.
HOST Here's the most interesting vignette. An English army officer reported that when you were in Palermo, Sicily you issued a challenge to anyone to fight you in jousting with horse and armor.
OXFORD For the honor of England. I issued a challenge for anyone to meet me in single combat for the honor of his prince and country. No one accepted my challenge. When Sicilians recognized my pendant boar they referred to me as the wild boar, verre salvaggio, cinghiale. They acknowledged me as Chevalier and Nobleman of England.
HOST Wasn't that rather arrogant, to issue that kind of challenge in a foreign country?
OXFORD Arrogant and yes courageous, the recklessness and daring of a fighting de Vere. Survival relies on confirmation of self esteem.
HOST It was said that you were a Bertram-like Englishman traveling Italy.
OXFORD No, the opposite. Bertram is Oxford traveling in Italy.
HOST My notes indicate you estimated the cost of your travels at £1,000 and had lavishly spent more than £8,000 and were in debt again. This time in a foreign country without access to ready cash.
OXFORD I wrote to Burghley to sell several of my estates but he didn't respond. In letter after letter I begged him to send money; he didn't. I was the proverbial horse starving while the grass grew.
HOST So how did you manage?
OXFORD I was fortunate to have borrowed 500 hundred crowns from of two Italian noblemen, Baptista Nigrone and Pasquino Spinola. In The Taming of the Shrew, I combined their names to Baptista Minola, the rich gentleman of Padua whose daughter Kate became the shrew. I allude to those crowns by having Petruchio say:
Crowns in my purse I have and goods at home
And so am come abroad to see the world
HOST Reminds me of the problem encountered by Jacques in As You Like It. (turning pages) Rosalind exclaims to him:
A traveler! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad. I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's; then, to have seen much and to have nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands.
To which Jacques laments: "Yes, I have gained my experience".
OXFORD And, of course, when Oliver threatens his brother Orlando, his old servant Adam gives him the same 500 crowns so he can escape.
HOST You keep making a point of the 500 crowns.
OXFORD The exact amount I had to borrow from Nigrone and Spinola because Burghley failed to send me my own money when I requested it.
HOST Then Jacques delivers the famous speech on the 7 ages of man.
OXFORD Sourced from the stunning floor mosaics I saw in the magnificent cathedral in Sienna.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms,
and so on.
Thereafter, I received a letter from Burghley who wrote that, because of my pressing need for money, he had to sell several estates at below market value. Interpreted, that means he first skimmed off his commission then deducted my wife's allowance, and having done that sent me the balance.
HOST Having received money from Burghley, you continued your travels in Italy.
OXFORD I paid off all my debts, with interest of course. Then I encountered a young Venetian boy, Orazio Cogno, a singer with an angelic voice. His parents agreed to have him accompany me as my traveling companion, so I gave them a generous gift. They also agreed to release him to my custody so he could spend a year with me in England. Being a musician, I thought it a most favorable opportunity to insert this angelic singer in my troupe of entertainers.
HOST While in Venice you found out that Burghley had the queen's ambassador spy on you.
OXFORD Our Venetian ambassador put me under surveillance.
HOST Why?
OXFORD To monitor my behavior, to fend off any impending scandal or perception of scandal, to protect his daughter, making me even more contemptuous of him. Even in Italy Burghley spying, exposing my privacy to their common gossip, enriching themselves on my estates and lands. I tell you they lacked the lineal breeding and manners of ancestral nobility.
HOST But that aside, a real scandal in England followed you to the Continent. In September you learned your wife had given birth in July to a daughter Elizabeth. Rumors were being circulated, by your cousin Henry Howard and Rowland Yorke, that the child was not yours. It would have been a great feat if those papists could have driven a wedge between you, the premier earl of England with Catholic leaning, and the stout Protestant Burghley.
OXFORD Scandal pursued me like one of Burghley's spies. I made a determined effort to analyze the matter. I kept reviewing the timing of our last consortium. But reason is little emollient for suspicion. Why did it take 2 months to inform me? and why did 3 months elapse from birth to baptism? Worried, I wrote to Burghley for an explanation and wondered why he didn't end forthwith the vicious rumor that the child wasn’t mine. He certainly had the power to do so.
HOST That rumor sourced two theories. First, Burghley remarked that your marriage was 3 years old and still no heir, no 18th Earl of Oxford. And this, after all, is why he proposed the marriage in the first place. So before you departed for the Continent, and because traveling was dangerous, he exploited his daughter's filial submissiveness by having her accept a known male fertilizer.
OXFORD No, no Anne was closely monitored by her mother.
HOST Maybe they were both in on it?
OXFORD No, they had their faults but not that one. I don't impute to Burghley the premeditated malignity of Iago.
HOST The other theory elaborates the possibility that Burghley bribed one of your friends to get you drunk then, in the dark, lead you to the bedchamber where Anne was waiting. In either case, the impregnation had to occur before you departed.
OXFORD It's the bed trick again. I used it several times in my plays. In my letter to Burghley, I proposed that I had not bedded Anne during the past 10 months and that he should have stopped the rumor before it became a scandal. He countered, protesting the unfounded charges against his virtuous Tannikin.
HOST And the result?
OXFORD After vacillating I accepted my countess’ explanation and Elizabeth, as my daughter. To celebrate her birth I had my portrait painted in Paris, gifting it to my countess along with 2 handsome white geldings. Recall that in The Winter's Tale, I have Leontes accept his little lost daughter Perdita.
HOST On quite another matter, why did you set a dozen plays in Italy and in other plays give many of your leading characters Italian names?
OXFORD I was enthralled by Italy, its storied past. Being a musician, I appreciated the musicality of its language. While in Sienna I was again in debt and wrote to Burghley for more money. I recalled that letter and those emotions when writing the Merchant of Venice. I had Antonio repeat, "the unpleasant'st words that ever blotted paper" and then confessing that, "my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low".
HOST In March 1576 you were visited in Paris by your cousin Lord Henry Howard and Rowland Yorke, the very two papists who were reported to have spread the rumor about your paternity.
OXFORD They assured me they were not the originators of the rumor and were in Paris only to repeat it for my benefit before it became the rumor du jour in the French court.
HOST While in Paris, you and Burghley exchanged letters of recrimination. He blamed you for your absence from your wife and persistent extravagance abroad.
OXFORD I was travelling with my attendants and the Italian boy singer. I didn't think supporting and entertaining them was extravagant. They were my responsibility. I was reminded of Caesar who spent extravagantly. Recall that in Gaul Caesar served his troops white wine spumante, champagne, to preserve their comradeship.
HOST What about the exchange of letters?
OXFORD Burghley was not forthcoming with money, withholding my own money from me, forcing me to beg for what was mine. His letter stated that he and the queen were advising me to return to England. Furthermore, he directed Anne not to meet with me on my return, sending instead his son Robert Cecil to meet me at Dover. Robert was the queen's Secretary. Still, furious at his attitude, I wrote in part (rises declaiming):
"My Lord, until I can better satisfy myself of some mislikes, I am not determined, as touching my wife, to accompany her. What those mislikes are, because some are not to be spoken of or written upon as imperfections, I will not deal withal. Some that otherways discontent me I will not blaze or publish until it please me. And last of all, I mean not to weary my life any more with such troubles and molestations as I have endured; nor will I, to please your Lordship only, discontent myself. Wherefore, as your Lordship very well writeth unto me, that you mean, if it standeth with my liking, to receive her into your house, these are likewise to let your Lordship understand that it doth very well content me; for there, as your daughter or her mother's, more than my wife, you may take comfort of her; and I, rid of the cumber thereby, shall remain well eased of many griefs I do not doubt that she hath sufficient proportion for her being to live upon and to maintain herself ".
HOST Were you abandoning your wife?
OXFORD Giving her back to her parents. They're the ones who allowed the birth of my alleged daughter to elevate from rumor to scandal. Burghley, the most powerful man in England, could have squashed the rumor with a single bellow.
HOST But didn't your dissatisfaction with your wife arise from several causes, such as your lack of ready cash?
OXFORD Burghley was not sending money in a timely fashion nor getting the queen to renew my license to travel. Also, I learned of a vengeful plot by Hatton to defame my contribution to the anthology A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres.
HOST So you returned to England.
OXFORD But in the crossing, Fortuna having again abandoned me, the ship was set upon by Dutch pirates. They plundered its cargo commandeering most of my property, stripping me of my newly acquired apparel right down to my shirt.
HOST You became their prisoner?
OXFORD Gleeful they had captured a nobleman, they demanded I bow down before them growling at me, "now, will ye stoop?" (stands)
No, rather let my head
Stoop to the block than these knees bow to any
Save to the god of heaven, and to my queen
And sooner dance upon a bloody pole
Than stand uncovered to a vulgar groom
True nobility is exempt from fear.
I escaped with my life when a passenger Scotsman recognized me and successfully intervened. (sits)
HOST You lost everything?
OXFORD Not quite; scoffing that my Italian goods were too effeminate, they thought them unworthy of theft. Most fortunate for me, the illiterates disregard notebooks of my travel experiences. Reaching England, I refused to land at Dover, where my brother-in-law Robert Cecil was to greet me. Was I to be greeted as a cuckold? I was not going to give in to my wife and father-in-law. I ordered the captain to sail up the Thames directly to London. I debarked styled in my Italian dress.
HOST It was reported you returned from your travels an Italianate Englishman.
OXFORD What is an Englishman? He is an immigrant from Scandinavia or the Continent. Yes, I returned with appreciation for things Italian. England had not yet reached the luxurious lifestyles of the Italian nobility.
HOST But in your plays some things Italian need clarifying. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, you have characters traveling by water from Verona to Milan, two inland cities.
OXFORD Connected by rivers and canals, the only comfortable way to travel.
HOST In The Taming of the Shrew you refer to sail making in Bergamo, another inland city.
OXFORD In reversal of coastal custom, Bergamo was famous for its sail making. In reversal of the Shrew, Anne had to learn that I was not to be slighted or tamed by her or her father.
HOST Speaking of the Shrew, there's the detailed interior description of Gremio's house. Why bother with details such as objects d'arte?
OXFORD Those luxuries interested me because they were not to be found in England.
HOST In The Winter's Tale you refer to Giulio Romano as a sculptor. He was a painter.
OXFORD He was also a sculptor, I saw his sculptures in Italy.
HOST How about this one, you refer to the tranect in The Merchant of Venice. What is a tranect?
OXFORD I don't recall ever using that word. It could refer to the traghetto, a ferry, between Venice and the mainland.
HOST Signori di notte, men of the night?
OXFORD In Venice, they are special officers of the night.
HOST Here's a conundrum. In Twelfth Night we have "the lady of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe".
OXFORD Of course, la signora degli stracci, a woman in rags, pretending to be high-born would marry such a man to dress her like a lady.
HOST How about "sano come un pesce" from The Two Gentlemen of Verona?
OXFORD Yes, yes, sound as a fish; that is, fish just out of water.
HOST Did you return to England with sympathy for the Church of Rome?
OXFORD I returned having in mind the lesson of Rome whose immigrant emperors disregarded Res Romana, Rome's way of life, Rome's authority. It's like England's monarchy being taken over by Puritans and the mercantile class. But I remained Protestant, still duty and honor bound to the queen and England. In the play Cymbeline, I had Posthumus return to England declaring:
I am brought hither
Among th' Italian gentry, and to fight
Against my lady's kingdom...
Hear patiently my purpose. I'll disrobe me
Of these Italian weeds and suit myself
As does a Britain peasant. So I'll fight
Against the part I come with.
HOST Was there some parallel between you and Posthumus?
OXFORD When I returned to England, I did so an Englishman and a patriot and so did Posthumus.
HOST Returning from your travels, it was reported you didn't give your wife any gifts.
OXFORD How could I, she was not available, being sequestered from me by her father.
HOST You gave the queen a present of Italian gloves trimmed with silk lace, profused with Italian perfume.
(OFFSTAGE English milliners had not any gloves embroidered or trimmed with gold or silk lace until the Earl of Oxford came from Italy bringing with him such gloves, sweet bags, a perfumed leather jerkin, and other pleasant things. He gifted the queen with a pair gloves tufted with roses of colored silk much perfumed. She took such pleasure in the gloves that, for many years, she was pictured wearing them and afterwards called their fragrant scent Oxford's perfume.)
HOST The same report scandalized your relationship with the young androgynous Italian boy singer. The rumor was that you attired him in girl's clothing and ...
OXFORD Lies! He was attired in Italian finery. My enemies began the rumor embellishing it at each telling, rumor montaged upon rumor, cemented by lies and more lies.
(OFFSTAGE Oxford, you took advantage of the scandalous rumor to keep separated from your virtuous wife in order to continue your freedom with the young boy, to associate with your lewd writer friends, vagabond actors, and perverse transvestites. It’s been rumored that when the young boy is in your embrace, his angelic singing and alto maidenly sighs. can be heard.)
HOST What about your marriage and attempts to reconcile you with your wife?
OXFORD I refused to be controlled by Burghley. I had more pressing interests, so I voluntarily exiled myself from court and public life. I sold five more estates to continue my lifestyle and patronage of friends. I devoted most of my time to writing.
HOST What happened to your poems in Sundrie Flowres, the ones purloined by Hatton?
OXFORD I found out that Hatton avenged my satire of him by having Flowres adulterated by lesser writers, publishing its bowdlerized version as the Posies of George Gascoigne. Again, the queen was the subject of an illicit love affair. The queen's censors denounced Posies, suppressed its printing, collected all unsold copies, and burned them. Because of my rank and concealed authorship, I was powerless to reclaim my purloined verses. I realized my rank and position would prevent me from acknowledging any part of Flowres as mine.
The laboring man that tills the fertile soil
And reaps the harvest fruit, hath not indeed
The gain, but pain; but if for all his toil
He gets the straw, the lord will have the seed.
.
.
.
So he that takes the pain to pen the book
Reaps not the gifts of the golden goodly muse;
But those gain that, who on the work shall look,
And from the sour the sweet by skill doth choose;
For he that beats the bush the bird not gets,
But who sits still and holdeth fast the nets.
HOST Writing under pseudonyms, how did Hatton know you wrote verses in Sundrie Flowres?
OXFORD He knew I was the one satirizing his affection for the queen.
HOST You continued using pseudonyms.
OXFORD For obvious reasons. Pseudonyms provide the anonymity of masks. Peers looked in horror at noblemen who wrote, especially for the theater. They thought it was undignified to submit their literary efforts to the applause of the common literate public.
HOST You continued to write poems. Some of them appeared in 1576 in the second Elizabethan anthology, The Paradyse of Daintie Devices. Here's a stanza from The Meeting with Desire:
The lively lark stretched forth her wing,
The messenger of Morning bright;
And with her cheerful voice did sing,
The Day's approach, discharging Night;
When that Aurora blushing red,
Descried the guilt of Thetis' bed.
and a stanza from What Cunning Can Express:
What cunning can express
The favor of her face?
To whom in this distress,
I do appeal for grace.
A thousand Cupids fly
About her gentle eye.
For these poems, you flagrantly revealed yourself as E. O. and were soundly condemned by your fellow nobles.
OXFORD Thereafter, at age 26, I didn't use my initials and continued to concealed my name.
HOST There were reports that you, along with your cousin Henry Howard and others, privately embraced Catholicism.
OXFORD I sympathized with it but never embraced it as they did.
HOST Meanwhile Burghley and Parliament were suggesting that your queen, 38, should marry to assure her successor.
OXFORD My cousin and others wanted the queen to marry a Catholic. She wasn't interested until Catherine de' Medici proposed a marriage between her second son, the Duke of Anjou, and Mary Queen of Scots. The marriage of those two Catholics would threaten England, so Elizabeth made it known she was interested in Catherine's proposal because France would become an ally against Spain. She appointed me her hostage and secretary, sending me to France to negotiate with the king about her possible marriage to the Duke of Anjou. To maintain freedom and secrecy in my letters, I used 9 cyphers. Most of the time I used the cypher Du Vray, a play on the French pronunciation of de Vere.
HOST Your negotiations with the French king were in vain because the queen and Anjou never married.
OXFORD Her expressed interest was only a delaying tactic. You must know that, for England's sake, the queen could easily lie without shame. She had a warrior's nerve and truculence. In the end, the French king thanked me for my services.
HOST Wasn't the proposed marriage was strongly opposed by Protestants and Parliament?
OXFORD The same reason the queen had already rejected the marriage proposal of Spain's Philip II. She was coy, diplomatic, and dishonest. She would never allow marriage to dilute her absolute power, whether to a Protestant or Catholic. She had received many offers but refused all suitors including the perennial proposal by Leicester, her unsanctified husband. The Privy Council would never approve of Leicester. Besides, she was barren. She and Leicester had been lovers for years and nothing came of it.
HOST When you were 27 you staged several plays for the queen. At Hampton Court, you performed The Historie of Error.
OXFORD My early version of The Comedy of Errors. Later performed, I believe, at my alma mater Gray's Inn. In the play, I included one of my revenges on Hatton by having Adriana remark about the ringing of a bell. Recall at court, Hatton strutted about ringing his bell bringing attention to himself.
HOST Performed at Whitehall, The Historie of a Solitarie Knight and The Historye of Titus and Gissipus.
OXFORD My early versions of Timon of Athens and Titus Andronicus.
HOST I have a note that it took you about 14 years to complete The Complaint of Philomene, which you used as an introduction to Titus.
OXFORD Because I began it as an adolescent, worked on it spasmodically during all my distractions. I always had many works in many stages of completion.
(OFFSTAGE That year 1577 the Stratford Shaxpere was only 13 years old. There were no known 13 year-old playwrights in anywhere in England. No play by a 13-year old was ever rehearsed anywhere, and no play by a 13-year old was ever performed anywhere and certainly not the queen's court.)
HOST Titus Andronicus is a play imbued with anger, revenge, and unspeakable cruelty, reminiscent of an afternoon of blood letting in the Roman Colosseum. Everyone is maiming or killing someone. Gabriel Harvey criticized you for your powerful revenge motif. Others criticized you for your shameless savagery.
OXFORD I was still smarting from the rumor about my paternity, the demeaning manner in which Burghley responded to my demands for money, his edict to my wife not to welcome me home, the queen recalling me from the Continent, etc. So, in the play, I have Queen Tamora's sons rape the beautiful Livinia and rip out her tongue so she can't name them, then cut off her hands so she can't write their names.
HOST There's also bit of racism when white Queen Tamora gives birth to a dark brown child. Its father, the Moor Aaron, replaces it with a white child. Aaron then kills the midwife and nurse, witnesses to the birth. He thereby saves himself from the wrath of the white king who would certainly kill him.
OXFORD Racism?
HOST The white queen and brown Moor.
OXFORD Normal convention for dramatic effect. I also used it in Othello.
HOST I got the impression that Queen Tamora's sexual conquests alluded to those of your queen.
OXFORD Yes, but I had to be careful not to anger her.
HOST About the queen and her court, the consensus was that you were the best court poet. Your verse distinguished by its concinnity, ingenuity, realism, and wit. Other court poets, such as Philip Sidney, were openly jealous of your great literary talent.
OXFORD Most of those poets appealed to moralistic Protestants.
HOST More and more writers were dedicating their works to you, including John Brooke who published The Staff of Christian Faith. You became the patron of another writer John Lyly, whom you installed in one of your apartments in the Savoy.
OXFORD He became my secretary. Now about that time I invested in the Martin Frobisher expedition to Baffin Island, Canada in the hope of finding gold ore. The ore turned out to be worthless and I lost my investment. I should have invested in Francis Drake's global expedition backed by the queen and others.
HOST About the queen, her proxy husband Leicester secretly married the widowed Lettice Knollys.
OXFORD The queen flew into a jealous rage, to think that her proxy husband had done this behind her back, making her the laughing stock at court and object of ridicule among the cognoscenti. She imprisoned him, then later relented but he never again enjoyed her indulgent favor. The quasi triumvirate was broken, leaving only the queen and Burghley to rule.
HOST Did you offer an opinion on any of this?
OXFORD I entertained the distraught queen at Richmond Palace by performing A History of the Cruelties of a Stepmother, my early version of Cymbeline. Delighted with my performance, I took advantage of her good mood by asking for military service. She refused me again commenting she desired my presence at court.
HOST Another interesting vignette has you refusing to dance at court. Why did you embarrass the queen by refusing to dance?
OXFORD The queen received the French and Spanish Ambassadors at court and requested that I entertain them by dancing. To prove to my enemies that I was a loyal Protestant, I refused to dance before those Catholics even though I feared she'd suspend me from court. But later in the year, much to my surprise, the queen granted me the Manor of Rysing for my "good, true, and faithful service". I was most grateful to the queen but her mood capricci made my head spin.
HOST Rumors were again circulating about your relationship with the young Italian boy singer.
OXFORD I had to put an end to those rumors, so I returned the boy to his parents. Two of my men accompanied the boy to Venice, with generous gifts for the boy and his parents.
HOST Having missed your opportunity to invest in the Drake expedition, you chanced the second Frobisher voyage becoming its principal investor.
OXFORD This time to find a northwest passage through Canada to the riches of the Orient. The queen invested £1,000 from her treasury. I invested £3,000 by purchasing shares of stock from a creditor called Lok.
HOST Unfortunately, that expedition also failed.
OXFORD Compounding that failure, Lok was found to be a fraudulent broker. I lost my entire investment. Later, Lok was arrested and imprisoned. I vented my frustration by portraying him as Shylok in The Merchant of Venice.
HOST From Fiorentino's Il Pecarone?
OXFORD That and other stories I heard while visiting Venice. In the Merchant, recall that Antonio was in for 3,000 ducats to Shylok the miserly money lender, the exact amount I lost. Like Burghley, Shylok despised the arts and depravity of pagan Rome.
HOST Later that year, the queen and her retinue visited Cambridge University. There the scholar Gabriel Harvey speaking of prominent figures at court, singled you out, praising you as prolific and foremost among poets. Speaking in Latin, Harvey addressed you directly:
(OFFSTAGE In the prime of his gallantest youth he bestowed gold coins upon me at Christ's College, Cambridge and otherwise vouchsafed me many gracious favors. Thy splendid fame demands even more than in the case of others the services of a poet possessing lofty eloquence. Thy merit doth not creep along the ground, nor can it be confined within the limits of a song. It is a wonder that reaches as far as the heavenly orbs. O great hearted-one, strong in thy mind and fiery will, thou wilt conquer thyself, thou wilt conquer others, thy glory will spread out in all directions. Mars will obey thee, Hermes will be thy messenger, Pallas striking her shield with her spear shaft will attend thee, Apollo has cultivated thy mind in the arts. I have seen many Latin verses of thine, yea even more English verses are extant; thou hast drunk deep draughts not only of the muses of France and Italy, but thou hast learned the manners of many men, and the arts of foreign countries. In thy breast is noble blood, courage animates thy brow, Mars lives in thy tongue, Minerva strengthens thy right hand, Bellona reigns in thy body. Thine eyes flash fire, thy countenance shakes spears; who would not swear that Achilles had come to life again?)
HOST Quite a eulogy. Thereafter, you became the patron of a group of poets and playwrights including Thomas Nashe and the willfully wicked Robert Greene, installing them in your Savoy apartments. They joined John Lyly your secretary. Why did you become their patron?
OXFORD Although excellent writers, they couldn't make enough money writing.
HOST Did you form a writing group?
OXFORD No, but we sometimes collaborated.
HOST How did you approach your own writing?
OXFORD How indeed, I had an urge to write. I was always writing, normally having several poems or plays in different stages of completion. Sometimes I had thoughts isolated from words. Sometimes words of disparate syntax isolated from thought. In the end, I melded thoughts and words. Writers have a habit of repeating the same thoughts in different ways by using different words.
HOST How did you go about writing plays?
OXFORD First, a main plot to umbrella subplots. Plays never have a single plot because life doesn't.
HOST Did you create your own plots?
OXFORD No, no. My plots came from classical sources, gossip, printed matter, history, stories, Italian, French, whichever and wherever.
HOST Some say your plots are much too contrived and complex, even preposterous.
OXFORD But very popular and well balanced by dramatic effect, especially when interlaced with my own experiences.
HOST Many of your plays theme strong male bonding and cross-dressing like your transvestite friends.
OXFORD Merely popular dramatic conventions.
HOST Some subplots allude to homosexuality such as Achilles and his male whore in Troilus and Cressida.
OXFORD Taken directly from classical literature. The Illiad is embellished by the tale that Achilles who, having wasted most of his sperm on his male whore, weakened his heel. Recall Paris'arrow.
HOST What about actually doing the writing, plays for example?
OXFORD Plays are the same conversations over and over,. Repeated to exhaustion they yield a script.
HOST There are those who claim you were a snob, writing only about royals and nobles. They claim your hundreds of leading characters are all royals and nobles except for Falstaff, Iago, and Shylock who are middle class.
OXFORD I wrote about what I knew, those with whom I was familiar.
HOST In fact, you transferred to your plays many of your own experiences.
OXFORD Of course! How could it be otherwise?
HOST What about the writing procedure itself?
OXFORD My words are the language of recitation, Cicero declaiming to his hearers. My draft manuscript, my foul papers, had crossouts, ink blots, interlinear revisions, etc.. I gave the draft to one of my secretaries who then scribed it for a clean copy. In doing so, he normally inserted his own revisions. Did you ever know a writer who didn't prefer to use his own words? That so-called clean copy was returned to me. I'd annotate it with stage directions creating the play book for producing that play. I wrote for my own company of actors. I never wrote for money or to register a play or to publish a play.
HOST So you made copies for actors?
OXFORD Copies! never, too expensive, too dangerous.
HOST Dangerous?
OXFORD Actors who could read were given only their own parts. Only the playwright or theater owner saw the entire script for fear of it being pirated, sold on the open market.
HOST In that case the author would be?
OXFORD Whoever had it printed, most times by that famous author anonymous. Plays were so popular play pirates were always trying to bribe actors to recite their parts for money. It was called memorial reconstruction. With enough parts, pirates could reconstruct a play for public performance. Normally those printings made bad quartos because, in reciting their parts, actors forgot the words or interjected their own words or the wrong words. It was common practice to pirate plays of anonymous authors because they couldn't resort to claims of infringement or plagiarism. In my case, Tudor nobility precluded me from claiming authorship of any of my pirated plays. Leicester was relentless in trying to bribe my actors, which piqued me no end. The Romans avoided all this by giving their citizens free entertainment.
HOST In the Colosseum?
OXFORD The arena turned red with blood. We certainly didn't want that.
HOST What about good quartos?
OXFORD Printed with the permission of the author or acting company.
HOST For those plays in which you subscribed a name, you used the pseudonym Shakespeare, why?
OXFORD Why indeed, why not John Brown or Jack Smith. I suppose there lingered memories of my childhood. As Viscount Bulbeck, I had a paperweight of a lion rampant shaking a broken spear, a sign of victory, its tip assumed imbedded in a dying enemy. Those memories were renewed by my success at jousting with echoes of "Oxford, shake spear; Oxford, shake spear". Then there was Gabriel Harvey's allusions to "thy countenance shakes spears" and to Pallas Athena the goddess who created the western drama, herself a shaker of spears killing giants in the battle of Olympus. Writing plays I fancied myself as she, killing abusive royal giants and nobles. And of course, I had been called Will and Willy, a term of friendly indulgence by my friends and other poets. Combining the two gave me William Shakespeare. To shake spear, you see, an eponymous pseudonym. Ti giuro che sono veramente Shakespeare.
HOST What?
OXFORD I say that I’m truly Shakespeare.
HOST But you had used other pen names from E. O. to anonymous.
OXFORD Recall that noblemen were consistently rebuking me for subscribing my poetry with my initials E. O., so I decided to use the pseudonym William Shakespeare.
HOST Was that a good choice?
OXFORD It was inevitable. Pallas Athena's helmet conveyed her invisible. William Shakespeare was the chosen heir of my invention, the natural evolution for public disguise making me invisible to my fellow noblemen.
HOST It was rumored you wrote plays as Shakespeare to earn a living so no one would connect you to your title and impoverished state.
OXFORD Nonsense, plays sold for only a few pounds. I'd have to write a play week just to maintain one of my man servants. Besides, I never wrote for money.
HOST What about copyright protection?
OXFORD Anyone who could get a play approved by the queen's censors could have it officially recorded in the Stationer's Register. That person, whether the author or pirate or anonymous, owned the right to copy.
HOST What about the language, couldn't the literati distinguish the author by his writing style?
OXFORD Sometimes. Legitimate authors showed their creative writing skills in using our new English language, an efficient language without diacritics or encumbrances of other languages.
HOST You had a huge vocabulary and as neologist created about 3,000 new words. Today, we have the new language of software and the internet.
OXFORD Software? internet?
HOST The new communications of our electronic renaissance, somewhat analogous to your language renaissance. Today, a playwright would find it difficult to write and produce one good play a year. Sometimes 2 or 3 of your plays were performed in a single year. Were they all written in that year?
OXFORD You have to understand there's a difference between writing and completing. I was always writing, working on poems or plays, usually in a different stage of completion. That's how I spent most of my time, writing and revising. When I thought a play ready for performance, I'd hand it over to my secretary or collaborating writers for scribing and cleaning up.
HOST So it's possible to have staged several plays a year because they could have been written sometime prior?
OXFORD Of course.
HOST Today you, your secretary, and writers collaborating would be similar to our studio writers collaborating in common, the William Shakespeare Studio.
OXFORD Keep in mind my collaborators, while cleaning up my manuscripts, inserted their own words here and there.
HOST If someone pirated one of your plays he could, with impunity, have it published using your pseudonym.
OXFORD True and I wouldn't contest it for all the reasons previously stated. Do you think I would play the fool, dishonoring my good name for a few pounds? Furthermore, publishers were in the market for poetry, not for plays recited in the streets.
HOST You had some exemption from censorship but how about your writers?
OXFORD All writers were censored. Any caricature of the queen or prominent nobleman certainly meant that writer would be punished. The derogatory portrayal on stage of a living person was a punishable offense.
HOST Example?
OXFORD Thomas Nashe's play, The Isle of Dogs, was considered slanderous. The theater was closed, copies destroyed, and Nashe imprisoned. There were even prominent noblemen who considered it debasing merely to view a play, especially in the streets.
HOST What about pilloried writers?
OXFORD For slanderous words against the queen or court, writers were brought to the pillory on horseback facing the horse's tail and their heads covered with paper. They were whipped and had their ears cut off.
HOST What about political satire?
OXFORD Noblemen were privy to court and state matters. Satires by them would be considered slanderous or even seditious. They were careful not to write such satires, and if they did, dare not publish.
HOST And commoners?
OXFORD They were not privy to court and state matters. Satires by commoners were considered fanciful and pure imagination, not a real threat to the monarchy. In any case, if a satire angered the queen, she'd order Burghley and his secret service, Walsingham, to ferret out the offender.
HOST Resulting in?
OXFORD Depending on the satire's intent that writer could be branded on the thumb of his pen hand, or have his pen hand cut off, or imprisoned. When poor John Nelson questioned the queen's supremacy, she had him beheaded, quartered, and his body quarters displayed in the streets to forewarn other writers. Always remember that power rules. For noblemen, it certainly meant expulsion from court, loss of privileges and incomes, disgrace, the end.
HOST Your queen as modern dictator controlling the media.
OXFORD For writing a factual history of the usurper Henry IV, Sir John Hayward was imprisoned in the Tower under sentence of death. Later, prominent noblemen intervened and the queen released him.
HOST In your Henry IV, you portrayed yourself as Prince Hal.
OXFORD An impetuous youth, reckless, irreverent, partying with his lewd friends and Falstaff at the Boar's Head Tavern. Prince Hal found relief, as I did, in composing poems and plays.
HOST The queen, Burghley, and others knew you were writing plays. You even portrayed the deposition of two kings, Henry VI and Richard II. Yet, you were not punished. What about the censorship of your writings?
OXFORD Recall that my position gave me some exemption. After all, my plays delighted her and she called upon me for entertaining foreign dignitaries at court. But there were oblique warnings by the queen not to report court matters in the guise of drama. I had to be careful not offend the queen or any prominent courtier. It was the queen's prerogative to have writings about court and state matters strictly censored.
(OFFSTAGE (queen's voice) The government of England is against slanderous and seditious writings, books, and satires. Furthermore, no interlude, comedy, tragedy, or show shall be performed unless first seen and allowed by the judges of the Star Chamber. Thereafter, local judges in towns and cities shall be licensed by one of my appointees.)
HOST It's inconceivable the queen would permit Shaxpere, or any commoner, to attend court as a reporter of its privileged conversations.
OXFORD I was never witness to your Shaxpere at court.
HOST What did Burghley think of your writing?
OXFORD For the sake of his daughter, Burghley disavowed my writings and didn't pursue the matter. He controlled the disposition of public records, destroying or preserving them at will. He could propagate a state fiction or divert a court intrigue so expertly as to make it impossible to trace the truth through documents. Of course, condemnation from the queen would have excluded me from court, making me a social outcast. Even so, I managed to pique her once, barely escaping her wrath.
HOST How escape?
OXFORD By dancing, I was her favorite dancing partner. Mind you, there were others accomplished in dancing such as Hatton but she preferred my dancing. Once at court she openly commended me:
(OFFSTAGE, queen's voice Oxford's dancing delights me as does his dress, manners, and quick wit. I must say he's the most brilliant of my young nobles, and if it weren't for his irreverence and fickle head he'd surpass all of them.)
OXFORD Her commendation made me the immediate target of envious nobles who complained I had, through my courtly manners and dancing, imposed myself on the queen.
HOST Speaking of commendations, you were again commended by Gabriel Harvey:
(OFFSTAGE For a long time past Phoebus Apollo has cultivated thy mind in the arts. English poetical measures have been sung by thee long enough. Let the courtly Epistle- more polished even than the writings of Castiglione himself-witness how greatly thou dost excel in letters. I have seen many Latin verses of thine, yea, even more English verses are extant.)
HOST Speaking of those verses, what about poetry?
OXFORD What about it?
HOST What is it?
OXFORD I know what it is and what it isn't. It isn't prose narrative broken up into short lines.
HOST So what is it?
OXFORD My verses are my thoughts, my will patterned with concinnity, adorned with intellect.
HOST Is that what you thought of when writing poems?
OXFORD No, no. I versed my thoughts until satisfied.
HOST I understand poetry was also censored.
OXFORD Noblemen who wrote poetry were particularly disdained. Erotic poetry was considered lascivious, lewd, immoral. In particular, love poetry was disdained and was subject to derision by strict Protestants and Puritans. While poetry was part of court culture, for noblemen to earn money writing verses was considered déclassé.
HOST You said that noblemen were forbidden to publish, why?
OXFORD There was an unwritten but well understood code prohibiting noblemen from publishing, to do so was considered infra dignitatem.
HOST Beneath one's dignity, but why?
OXFORD Noblemen received income from their estates and land holdings. To publish one's writings for a few shillings from the minority literate public was not only to betray their class but to take money from the hands of commoners. Those who dared publish did so using pseudonyms.
HOST As you did.
OXFORD Quite so. Philip Sidney was only a knight, not a nobleman, but during his life the stigma of print forbade him to publish his sonnet Astrophel and Stella.
HOST But that sonnet was about his illicit sexual yearning for the still living pubescent Penelope Devereux, the Stella of his sonnet. Because of his scandalous sexual love for the child, the sonnet wasn’t published until after his death.
OXFORD True, but poets were subject to the same punishment as were playwrights.
HOST About your acting company, beginning in 1579 your acting company continued performing plays, including The Historie of the Second Helene, at court and elsewhere.
OXFORD That play was my early version of All's Well That Ends Well. Also another play, A Morrall of the Marryage of Mynde and Measure, which I began in Padua writing in one of my notebooks. It was my early version of The Taming of the Shrew, another play set in Italy.
HOST By the way, is it true the Shrew was based on your sister's bad marriage?
OXFORD My sister Mary married Bertie Peregrine, later Lord Willoughby. From the beginning, it was a troubled marriage just as mine was. The rumor was that my sister, Lady Mary, was beaten with a rod by her Lord Willoughby. I used that rumor to characterize Petruchio and Kate. In the play, Kate is an unhappy, irascible woman tamed by a fortune seeking suitor. They engage in sarcastic repartee and sexual banter. He uses abusive language and makes physical threats against Kate. In the end, she submits to his patriarchal authority.
HOST Your acting company also performed A Mask of Amazones and A Maske of Knights.
OXFORD The portrayal of a tournament between 6 ladies and 6 gentlemen who surrender to those ladies. Over time it became my version of Love's Labor's Lost.
HOST Two months later, on Mardi Gras, you performed at Whitehall the History of Murderous Michael.
OXFORD The story of Arden of Feversham. He was murdered by his wife Alice, abetted by her servant Michael, ready to kill anyone who interfered in his lust for her.
HOST Later John Lyly, your secretary, published Euphues and His England. Anthony Munday, another of your writers, published Mirror of Mutabilities. Edmund Spenser, your friend, published Shepheardes Calender, in which he portrayed you as the poet Willie. All these works published with dedications to you.
OXFORD Spenser's Willie is another allusion to my sobriquet.
HOST Then in September, at the queen's tennis court, you quarreled with Sir Philip Sidney, your court and literary rival.
OXFORD I ordered Sidney to desist so I could play. He refused; we argued. I called him "puppy", the offspring of dogs. He challenged me to a duel. Attending, the queen forbade dueling over such a trivial matter. She explained to Sidney the difference between a gentleman and nobleman, his social superior. She advised him to retire yielding the court to me. Thereafter, at court, I was accused of arrogance.
(OFFSTAGE Oxford and Sidney are bitter court, jousting, and literary rivals. Sidney, is a strong Protestant and morally superior to the flawed Oxford, and is championed his uncle the malevolent Leicester. Oxford, is viewed as tentatively Protestant and immoral, and is championed the fatherly Sussex who not only leans towards Catholicism but is Leicester’s enemy. Sidney distinguishes himself in courageous military exploits, while Oxford is denied opportunities to do the same. Oxford is considered the best of court poets, Sidney the lesser. At court each has his advocates and opponents.)
HOST About this time, you sold five more estates.
OXFORD My entertainments and patronage of writers were again impoverishing me.
HOST In December, at Burghley's estate Theobalds, your company of actors performed for the queen. It was the first time you laid eyes on Elizabeth 2½, your daughter of disputed paternity. Even so, you did not reconcile with your wife or embrace your daughter.
OXFORD I later plotted that experience in Pericles, in which he discovers his long lost daughter Marina.
HOST Doesn't that play begin with a bit of incest? King Antioch's daughter is so beautiful he beds her.
OXFORD Quite so. Now in The Winter's Tale the long lost daughter Perdita is presumed dead. In the end, she is grown to a beautiful princess and is reunited with her father and mother.
HOST Speaking of mothers, Burghley and Parliament again concerned about succession, were encouraging the queen to marry.
(OFFSTAGE, queen's voice As queen I may neither choose whom I would, nor refuse whom I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed by a dead father, who provisioned in his will "our said daughter Elizabeth, after our decease, shall not marry, nor take any person to be her husband, without the assent and consent of the Privy Councillors").
OXFORD She was determined not to marry one of her own subjects, insisting that she would marry only royalty suitable to hers.
HOST Didn't Catherine de' Medici offer her second marriage proposal on behalf of one of her sons? This time on behalf of her third son, the French Duke of Alcenon, surely royalty but Catholic.
OXFORD Yes, and under pressure to marry, the 46 year old queen agreed to be courted by the young duke half her age. When Alcenon arrived incognito, some said say he did so because he was stunted and slightly disfigured. But Alcenon's bit of costume drama intrigued the queen, further impressed when he charmed her with his "exquise des gaitès d'amour".
HOST His exquisite charming phrases of love?
OXFORD Especially when he avowed having a passion for older women like the queen. She continued her habit of nicknaming her favorites by calling him her little Moor. Leicester and Hatton deplored the duke's effeminate demeanor. They spread the story that, back in France, the duke was a young frog who jumped from bed to bed. When her maids-of-honor repeated the tale, she ended their gossip by putting them under house arrest. In spite of the gossip and fury over their courtship, nothing came of it. The Catholics favored it; the Protestants were against it, and most surprising the strong Protestant Burghley was for it.
HOST The stalwart Protestant in favor of marriage to a Catholic?
OXFORD Burghley was famous for avoiding danger. Marriage to Alcenon meant alliance with France, thereby keeping the pope and Spain at bay. The marriage might even produce an heir, who Burghley would take under his powerful wings. But all the pros and cons were for naught because the pope would insist the marriage be a Catholic ceremony, which means the queen would have to convert to Catholicism. She would never do that. Furthermore, she would never share power with a husband or anyone else. She wanted a lover, a prince consort, not a power-sharing partner.
HOST There were those who suffered because of their opinions of the proposed marriage.
OXFORD John Stubbs published a pamphlet against the queen's proposed marriage to the Catholic duke. He had the courage, some say foolishness, to subscribe his name to it. The queen promptly had him arrested, had his pen hand cut off, and imprisoned him. Expiring from loss of blood, he shouted "God save our Protestant queen".
HOST In that respect the two queens are alike, Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II.
OXFORD Elizabeth II?
HOST The current queen of England's United Kingdom. She refuses to share power with her husband or have her son-in-waiting crowned king.
HOST In February of 1580, you performed at court The History of Portio and Demorantes.
OXFORD Alluding to Marlowe's Jew of Malta, itself the early version of my play The Merchant of Venice.
HOST At court you also performed something called A Pleasant Conceit by de Vere. You used your name.
OXFORD An exercise in comedy in which I satirized Hatton as Malvolio and Sidney as Aguecheek in what eventually became an early version of Twelfth Night. Burghley and Sussex wrote to the Chancellor of Cambridge to allow me and my players to show our cunning in Twelfth Night and several other plays already practiced before the queen's majesty, but for some unknown reason the Chancellor refused.
HOST About this time Munday dedicated to you his Zelauto, The Fountain of Fame. In it he portrays you as Zelauto with his 9 Muses and the queen as Soldane.
OXFORD Zelauto has his literary Muse, his itch to write.
HOST There's Zelauto the Sicilian knight issuing a challenge, reminiscent of the challenge you issued in Palermo while visiting Sicily. There's also a story contriving the winning over of a usurer's daughter in much the same manner as in The Merchant of Venice.
OXFORD You should be aware that writers borrow from each other. They also borrow from themselves, from one work to another.
HOST Then in spite of your shrinking fortune, you took over the Earl of Warwick's acting company.
OXFORD I added more boy actors and leased the Blackfriar's Theater. With my new acting company, John Lyly and I produced plays for the public and of course at court.
HOST Speaking of Lyly he and your other writers got involved in a feud with Gabriel Harvey.
OXFORD Greene, Lyly, Nashe on one side, and Gabriel Harvey with his two brothers on the other. They feuded over language, literature, and religion and almost came to dueling. Their friction smoldering ever since I hired Lily, not Harvey, as my secretary. Harvey's deep resentment became evident when he published his poem Speculum Tuscanismi, Mirror of Tuscanism, written only for Edmund Spenser's eyes but somehow got printed and distributed.
HOST That poem is a burlesque of you, a literary cartoon of your womanish dress and Tuscanish manners. Nashe commented that, with his pen, Harvey hewed and slashed you with his hexameters. Several years earlier Harvey addressed you as peerless in England, without like for discourses in tongue, praising your quick wit, and being without equal. What do you make of Harvey's capricious opinions of you?
OXFORD His obvious disappointment over my hiring Lily. In fact, Lyly charged Harvey with libel. Later, to protect himself, Harvey wrote several letters stating he meant no harm because such parodic liberties were not to be taken against Tudor nobility.
HOST Harvey's caricature of you was greatly appreciated by your enemies at court.
(OFFSTAGE Oxford, you're a court maverick, poet, and rake. You're a dissolute and worthless aristocrat shaming Tudor nobility. Because of your Italianate dress, foppish and womanly manners, extravagance, arrogance, braggadocio, and your downright irreverence for court protocol, we blackballed you from our esteemed and privileged Order of the Garter. Your garters are not made of manly caddis but of Italian silk trimmed with lace, vying in style with those of the queen. (male laughter))
HOST Courtiers rebuked you for your Italianate bearing.
OXFORD Well, after all, le style c'est l'homme n'cest pas?
HOST Speaking of style, let's talk about handwriting styles. The play Sir Thomas More was mostly in Munday's handwriting. Other parts of the manuscript were written in five different hands, including Shakespeare's.
OXFORD Naturally, it was a collaborative effort. I gave it to Munday. He must have passed it on to other writers able to bombast blank verse.
HOST Again, Shakespeare as the author of a collaborative effort?
OXFORD Depends on the play.
HOST Speaking of handwriting, there are no known poems or plays in Shaxpere's handwriting; there's not even a letter, or note. The only known samples of Shaxpere's handwriting are his 6 signatures, none of are the same, and none of which are literate spellings of the name Shakespeare. Do you know when the Stratford Shaxpere became the London Shakespeare?
OXFORD I never had any dealings with the Stratford man.
HOST A contemporary actor, William Beeston, said of Shaxpere that "if invited to write, he was in pain". If the pain was physical, he could have had dysgraphia; if it was mental, he could have had dyslexia. Stratfordians claim the illegible signatures were the result of his illness.
OXFORD Are they claiming he was ill throughout his entire life?
HOST One rumor had it Shaxpere wrote left-handed with a sinister slant. He was forced to write right-handed with a dexter slant. Perhaps that's why Beeston claimed it pained him to write. But if Shaxpere had problems writing, how could he have written all those poems and plays?
OXFORD Your question answers itself.
HOST It appears that if a an uneducated commoner becomes a popular playwright he's considered great, but if it pains him to write he becomes a genius.
OXFORD After their feud with Harvey, Greene, Lyly, Munday, and Watson traveled the Continent to get away from London. Of course, I sponsored them. Munday, on his return, brought me distressing news. The Jesuits in Italy were going to ally with Jesuits in England to depose the queen for restoring in England the Church of Rome. Burghley had Walsingham’s secret service men apprehend and imprison all known Catholic sympathizers. They arrested my cousin Lord Henry Howard, Philip Howard, Charles Arundel, and the Jesuit Southwell. My cousin claimed I was also a sympathizer and they arrested me.
HOST The same cousin who circulated the rumor about your paternity?
OXFORD The same, he was the worst villain who lived on this earth; his family the most treacherous under heaven. I may have had Catholic leaning but I was loyal to the queen and she knew it. We were freed for lack of evidence but I immediately separated myself from the others who seriously talked of restoring the Church of Rome. Thereafter, I prepared interrogatories to draw out the real conspirators, including my cousin and the aforementioned.
HOST They denied your accusations and, in turn, accused you of attending mass celebrated by the Jesuit Southwell.
OXFORD Not true.
HOST Contradicting you, they accused you of ...
OXFORD Being an atheist, saying I thought the Trinity was a fable, that its scriptures were written merely to satisfy church dogma. They accused me, still married, of wanting to elope with Anne Vavasor one of the queens maids-of-honor. They further accused me of denigrating the queen, claiming I thought she was a man in woman's clothing, that she had a man's harsh singing voice, and that she was absent the feminine graces of Anne Vavasor.
HOST Southwell reported that he saw you flailing about, that your railing accusations against them were the outpourings from your hot temper and fickle head because you had been drinking heavily. Your accusers further claimed you were conspiring with Catholics to punish the queen for having called you a bastard.
OXFORD
Enlarge the man committed yesterday
That raged against our person. We consider
It was excess of wine that set him on
And on his more advice, we pardon him.
HOST Those words sound familiar, from one of your Henry's?
OXFORD The queen forgave my railing accusations but her leniency was fervently protested by my accusers who called for strong punishment.
HOST Dissatisfied with the queen's leniency towards you, Arundel told Burghley that:
(OFFSTAGE "To record the vices of this monstrous earl were a labor without end. I will prove him a bugger of a boy that is his cook, by his own confession as well as by witness. I have seen this boy many a time in his chamber, doors closed-locked, together with him, maybe at Whitehall and at his house at Broad Street, and finding it so, I have gone to the back door to satisfy myself: at the which the boy hath come out all in a sweat, and I have gone in and found the beast in the same plight. But to make it more apparent, my Lord Harry saw more, and the boy confessed it to Southwell, and himself confirmed it to Mr. William Cornwallis, who reported Oxford desiring of" a priest to whom he must confess buggery".)
OXFORD Know that garrulous men are not persuaded by propriety. The queen dismissed all their complaints then wisely mollified their distemper. But thereafter, for some months, she branded me a trouble maker and snubbed me.
HOST On another matter, Drake completed his global voyage. His ships were laden with gold and treasure from plundering Spanish settlements and pirating their ships at sea. Was it true that Drake hung at sea one of Burghley's spies?
OXFORD Quite, Drake caught Burghley’s man spying on him.
HOST It was reported those who backed Drake, the queen, Hatton, and other investors, made huge fortunes beyond their most hopeful expectations.
OXFORD Distressing me no end because I was still smarting from my loss of £3,000 to the fraudulent Lok. As a consolation prize, the queen put me in charge of her Progress to Plymouth.
HOST Why a progress?
OXFORD To show herself in a planned visit to the countryside wherein she progresses from town to town, displaying royalty to her subjects, making herself available for their adulation. The progress reminiscent of those glorious triumphal marches through Rome by victorious generals. Of course, its progressive costs were borne by noblemen living in those towns, bribing the queen with huge sums of money to request that she privilege them with her person.
HOST Reminds me of our politicians on their campaign stumps, propping up their images, getting free press coverage.
OXFORD Along the way I played the fool for spectators, a motley to view, brandishing the Lord Great Chamberlain's white staff, the same my grandfather used in the coronation of Anne Boleyn.
HOST Now, to the matter of Hatton's affection for the queen. In a letter to the queen, Hatton conveyed his ardor by writing that "the sheep hath no tooth to bite, where the boar's tusk may raze and tear", meaning?
OXFORD The queen called Hatton her mouton, her sheep, and me her boar because of my family emblem. It was an obvious reference to my tusk, my wicked pen, which could inflict injury as I had done to him in Flowres and other writings. But I had to write a fine line being careful not to ridicule to slander the captain of the queen's bodyguard.
HOST But then you got yourself into another sexual scandal, this time with Anne Vavasor one of the queen's maids-of-honor.
(OFFSTAGE The ravishing beauty Anne Vavasor was about 10 years younger than Oxford. She was blessed with ivory complexioned oval face patched with red roses, topped by brunette canopy over dark piercing eyes. A sexually active, exuberant, tantalizing dish parading herself before gentlemen at court, especially before the celebrated Earl of Oxford long separated from his wife.)
HOST The rumor was that your malicious papist cousin, Lord Henry Howard, hoping to wreck the Oxford-Burghley alliance, encouraged the 19 year old beauty to pursue you, a 29 year old lonely earl separated from a wife devoted to her parents.
OXFORD You should understand that the Howards and Vavasors were kin. The Vavasor clan was known for its beautiful women, its men renowned as jurists, soldiers, and swordsmen.
HOST Did you get involved because you were separated from your wife, because the queen was involved with Hatton, or what?
OXFORD Prodded by the goddess Ate, Vavasor beckoned and I responded to her mysterious attraction. I surrendered to her vamptive charms, to the mystery called woman with putative powers to love and punish. Recklessly, I stepped into the aura of the cravable dark lady whose love blown coaly locks exposed her swollen bud the which flowering solely to embrace the ascent of man.
HOST What?
OXFORD Even a wise man can be charmed by a woman whose scintillating beckons promise sexual delights. I had to write a poem:
What cunning can express
The favour of her face?
To whom in this distress,
I do appeal for grace
A thousand Cupids fly
About her gentle eye.
From whence each throws a dart
That kindleth soft sweet fire
Within my sighing heart,
Possessed by Desire.
No sweeter life I try,
Than in her love to die.
HOST You wrote another poem titled Anne Vavasor's Echo. In the first stanza, you echo your name Vere in the end rhyme:
Oh heavens! who was the first that bred in me
this fever? Vere.
Who was the first that gave the wound whose
fear I wear for ever? Vere
What tyrant, Cupid, to my harm usurps thy
Golden quiver? Vere.
What wight first caught this heart and can from
bondage it deliver? Vere.
OXFORD I used the echo convention also in Romeo and Juliet. I have Juliet cry:
Else would I tear the cave where echo lies,
And make her airy tongue more hoarse than Mine,
With repetition of my Romeo's name, Romeo!
I used Vavasor as model for Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and again for Rosaline in Love's Labors Lost, in which Berowne mocks himself for having fallen in love with her:
A whitely wanton, with a velvet brow,
With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes;
Ay, and by heaven, one that will do the deed
Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard!
Am I to sigh for her! to watch her!
To pray for her!
HOST When courting Vavasor, it was reported you were about £6,000 in debt.
OXFORD Expensive gifts to the queen and Vavasor, patronizing actors and writers, and producing plays proved very expensive. Burghley was furious that I was gifting my paramour and not my wife. I had to sell more of my estates, 12 or 13.
HOST How many estates did you own?
OXFORD Perhaps 50 or 60.
HOST Any idea how many properties you owned?
OXFORD The precise number, I don't know 200 or 300. I have no talent for numbers or keeping records, I left that to Burghley and his mercantile class.
(1581-1591)
HOST In January 1581 you participated in your second jousting tournament, held in honor of the queen's suitor, the Duke of Alcenon. The challengers included your enemies Leicester and Philip Howard, accused of involvement in a plot to overthrow the queen. So they were out to get you as the saying goes.
OXFORD Tournaments were great spectacles, not the Circus Maximus, but well attended.
HOST In spite of their revenge motif, you defeated the challengers winning your second prize in as many tournaments.
OXFORD Spectators again shouted, "Oxford, shake spear; Oxford, shake spear". The queen, waving her royal colors, called me her young Turk.
HOST By the way, you must have had mild weather to joust in January.
OXFORD Our island weather normally permits jousting in winter. Recall that Columbus rode the warm West Indian currents on his voyage back to Spain, the same ones warming England.
HOST Shortly after winning the tournament, one of Hatton's friends said he saw someone near Vere House riding a footcloth nag. Hatton's friend reported that:
(OFFSTAGE It was my great fortune at my last being at London to walk through the Strand towards Westminster, where I met one come riding towards me on a footcloth nag, appareled in French cuff, a French cloak, a French hose, and in his hand a great fan of feathers, bearing them up very womanly against the side of his face. And for that I had never seen any man wear them before that day, I began to think it impossible that there might be found a man so foolish as to make himself a scorn to the world to wear so womanish a toy; but rather thought it had been some shameless woman that had disguised herself as a man in our hose and cloaks.)
HOST The footcloth is part of a nobleman's livery. You were a nobleman and you lived near the Strand. Was that you riding the footcloth nag?
OXFORD Of course. Drama, I was interested in drama. Hatton had published his friend's story to embarrass me for my mockery of the French and refusal to dance for the Catholic Duke of Alcenon still courting the queen.
HOST Then in March, a most traumatic event. You got the news that Anne Vavasor had given birth to a son.
(OFFSTAGE On Tuesday at night Anne Vavasor was brought to bed of a son in the maidens' chamber. The Earl of Oxford is avowed to be the father, who hath withdrawn himself with intent, as it is thought to pass the seas. The ports are laid for him and therefore if he have any such determination it is not likely that he will escape. The gentlewoman, the selfsame night she was delivered, was conveyed out of the house and the next day committed to the Tower. Others who have found any ways party to the cause have also been committed. Her Majesty is greatly grieved with the accident, and therefore I hope there will be some order taken as the like inconvenience will be avoided.)
OXFORD I acknowledged paternity, settling property on the infant boy and giving Vavasor £2,000 cash. I petitioned the queen for her approval for my divorce but, unlike her father, she would not hear of it and adamantly denied me. That son who could have been the 18th Earl of Oxford was, instead, the cause of my downfall. Our love realized, its deciduous passion fell to the fearful ground of the queen's wrath and retribution. She denounced me for tamping one of her maids-of-honor. I still see the shrewish queen pointing at me her saber-like index finger, the pierces of her rapier wit rebuking me in the presence of Burghley and my enemies. Defenseless, I stood before her and the court wearing my imperfections like an oversized motley cap.
HOST You were married to her chief minister's daughter.
OXFORD Yes, but is there any bite as venomous as that of a scorned woman. Was my mistake that I ignored the queen, bedding instead one of her maids-of-honor? This is the same queen who at 34 invited a youth of 17 into her bedchamber. There encouraging the youth to perform those personal and intimate services not available from her maids-of-honor but, with panting and tremulous whispers, readily procurable from her Lord Great Chamberlain. She took advantage of my naïveté at a time when I idolized her. She extended our afternoon trysts by cooing in Italian her constant encouragement for that renewable passion available only from youth's potency. Her 34 year old hungry heart called for several servings.
HOST Are you now complaining that as a youth you bedded the Queen of England? Surely, it must have been the fantasy of every English youth and dream of every nobleman?
OXFORD Do you think that from the foremost earl in England, she could order my most intimate services as if she were ordering the performance of a play?
HOST You must have known of the queen's abhorrence of illicit love affairs with her maids-of-honor.
OXFORD While she punished me and others for dalliances with her maids-of-honor, she dallied not only with impunity but with sovereign right. In truth, she was her father’s daughter.
HOST A queen’s prerogative?
OXFORD She swooped down on me like a hungry falcon mauling a scurrying field mouse. Humiliated, I responded sotto voce "cuore ingrado". Enraged at my Italian reminder of our past afternoon trysts, she imprisoned me in the Tower. She forbid me to see Vavasor or our newborn son, also in the Tower. Once bathed in Diana's moonglow Vavasor cast off her Tudor livery for the common whore's rags. I never again saw Vavasor and the queen suspended me from the Royal Privy Council. La reine la veut.
HOST The queen wills it.
OXFORD Once again the crown's malice against a de Vere. In my dungeon I envisioned Charon crossing the Thames coming after me. There in solitary confinement I was ruined, my good name and social status criminalized. I feared the Tower not out of cowardice but out of precedent. My uncle the Earl of Surrey was imprisoned there and beheaded by Henry VIII. My uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, was imprisoned there and beheaded by the queen.
HOST In Richard III, you mentioned the Tower 26 times.
OXFORD Why not? I was imprisoned there 41 days, almost double the references to Oxford.
HOST Fortunately, Lord Burghley interceded on your behalf.
OXFORD After 41 days of penance the queen relented and released the 3 of us with the provisos that we be banished from court and remain apart under house arrest. In disgrace, exiled from court, I removed myself from public life for the solitary occupation of full time writer.
HOST Several of your plays portray men in retreat.
OXFORD Hamlet is alienated from his environment, Macbeth and Othello are isolated within their own societies. Lear, Timon, Coriolanus all exiled as I was.
HOST By the way in the play Timon of Athens, Timon is a rich and generous patron who finds that in spite of his lavish generosity he is left friendless and in debt. He denounces the human race, except for his faithful servant Flavius. The play has many allusions to your own lifestyle, but did you have such a faithful servant?
OXFORD Throughout the volatile years of celebrity or ruin, my servant Robert Christmas was at my side, a good soldier. And of course, I had my new servant, William Shakespeare, whose faithful service will live in posterity.
HOST The Timon play is sourced from The Historie of a Solitarie Knight.
OXFORD Because Timon becomes solitary without friends, retiring as a hermit.
HOST You also retired to a solitary life. Whenever you appeared in public, you were attended with the known notoriety of sexual scandal and consequent imprisonment.
OXFORD I made up for the undercurrent of social ridicule by buying myself a large ship, which I named Edward Bonaventure, hoping it would bring me good frotune.
HOST For the most part, you and your wife were estranged for about 9 years. If she attended court, you wouldn't. During the last 5 years of estrangement, hoping for reconciliation, she and you exchanged several letters. In one of her letters your wife wrote:
(OFFSTAGE My Lord, in what misery I may account myself to be, that neither can see any end thereof nor yet any hope to diminish it. And now of late having had some hope in my own conceit that your Lordship would have renewed some part of your favor that you began to show me this summer, when you made me assured of your good meaning, though you seemed fearful how to show it by open address. Now after a long silence of hearing anything from you, at the length I am informed that your Lordship has entered into a misliking of me without any cause in deed or thought. And therefore, my good Lord, I beseech you in the name of God, which knoweth all my thoughts and love towards you, let me know the truth of your meaning towards me; upon what cause you are moved to continue me in this misery, and what you would have me do in my power to recover your constant favor, so as your Lordship may not be led still to detain me in calamity without some probable cause, whereof, I appeal to God I am utterly innocent. From my father's house in Westminster, the 7th December 1581.)
HOST We have no copy of your reply, did you?
OXFORD Of course, we exchanged several letters.
HOST Why did you separate in the first place?
OXFORD Gentle, submissive Anne remained the daughter of her parents, not my wife. She turned out to be not a suitable wife for the Earl of Oxford. She would never be the devoted wife I craved for, a wife who approved of my literary pursuits. Truth is, I never felt about her the way I did about Vavasor.
HOST What about your bohemian lifestyle?
OXFORD I felt some remorse over my behavior. Eventually we reconciled and I rejoined her around Christmas.
HOST So Anne took you back after you had betrayed her with the enchantress Vavasor. It's interesting to note only your wife's letters were preserved.
OXFORD I have no doubt her father controlled her correspondence and deliberately destroyed mine to prove I didn’t care enough to respond to his daughter’s entreaties.
HOST In some of your plays men treat women cruelly. On flimsy evidence, imagining them unfaithful, men actually plan to kill them but then are overwhelmed with remorse. I'm thinking of Helena in All's Well, Hero in Much Ado, Desdemona in Othello, Imogen in Cymbeline, and Hermione in Winter's Tale.
OXFORD My wife had her limitations and while our marriage was dysfunctional from the beginning, I never once thought of the cowardly act of murder. But a body burning with passion may be, in Asperges, sprinkled with profane water.
HOST It appears you were courageous in tilts and martial pursuits but not so towards your wife Anne. You portray Othello in the same manner. In the play you are Othello, Anne is Desdemona, Burghley is Branbantio, Henry Howard and Rowland Yorke - messengers of the vicious paternity rumor - become the villainous Iago who convinces Othello that Desdemona is unfaithful, goading him to murder her.
OXFORD I never thought to deceive myself with murder.
HOST Soon after your reconciliation with your wife, there was the scandalous rumor that the queen had given birth to another son. I thought she was barren?
OXFORD The rumor making fertile her barrenness.
HOST Another rumor claimed she had the newborn buried in the Tower.
OXFORD If true, the infant was probably taken to the Tower's butcher's corner and there buried in its bloody bowels.
HOST Do you think she was capable of that?
OXFORD Was she capable? She beheaded Scots, two of my uncles, branded irascible writers on their writing thumbs, cut off John Stubbs' writing hand, beheaded and quartered John Nelson, arrested her own maids-of-honor for gossiping, and who knows what else no one is privy to. She ruled as Roman emperor. When she issued an edict not covered by law, Burghley would have Parliament approve it. Her unchallenged prerogatives became precedents for issuing warrants.
HOST There were many rumors about the queen, but is it true that she kissed Alcenon in public?
OXFORD A publicity stunt. The French ambassador wanted some proof of her serious intentions. Next day, in public, she kissed Alcenon full on the mouth and turning to the French Ambassador remarked "Does that convince you of my honorable intention?" Later, she took me aside requesting a play in which a queen rejects her foreign suitor by thwarting the designs of that foreign power upon her land. It was her diplomatic way of rejecting Alcenon. When I told her she had already seen a like version at Richmond Palace, she was delighted. It was my early version of Cymbeline in which Roman Britain rejects Rome.
HOST In 1582 you were 32. Your release from the Tower did not end your adversity from the Vavasor affair. There was one Sir Thomas Knyvet, Vavasor's uncle, a murderous swordsman highly regarded in court and member of the Privy Chamber.
OXFORD One day in passing he approached, a minatory courtier seeking vengeance as the injured party. In a parlous state, he suddenly drew his rapier wounding me. I drew mine piercing him. We dueled. Both bleeding from our wounds, we were urged to withdraw before fighting to the death. I allude to my wound in Romeo and Juliet having Mercutio say of his wound, "not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door". Thereafter, I retreated from court, again concentrating on writing.
HOST But that fray wasn't the end, was it? Your men and Knyvet's men fought in the streets.
OXFORD Knyvet's men made several attempts at residuary revenge without serious incident. But then Knyvet killed one of my men. Then one of my men killed one of his. Not satisfied with those deaths, they continued to brawl in the streets. In the course of a year, I believe four men died. In Romeo and Juliet I portrayed that fighting in the Mercutio-Tybalt street brawl. Of course, I viewed myself as Romeo and Knyvet as Tybalt.
HOST It could have evolved into a family feud like the Capulets and Montagues.
OXFORD Burghley, fearing his daughter a widow, intervened on my behalf informing the queen that Knyvet's men were the inciters, and that Anne Vavasor was not an innocent country maid debauched by me but was in fact a drab, dark-eyed minx whose loose reputation was well earned at court. But Hatton convinced the queen to support Knyvet. Angry at me for having betrayed her with Vavasor, she settled the dispute by supporting Knyvet. I took the hint, hurried home, and there buried myself in writing and revising.
HOST Meantime, your troubles were not confined to the queen and Knyvet. Your patronage of writers and the theater were again impoverishing you.
OXFORD That patronage was expensive. We were producing several plays a year, so I had to sell four more estates.
HOST Thomas Watson published his Hekatompathia dedicating it to you, and for which you wrote the introduction. In his Teares of Fancy, published posthumously, Watson included one of your poems from Flowres titled Love Thy Choice beginning, "Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, my heart".
OXFORD He was my friend and we had a working relationship.
HOST About that time your brother-in-law, Lord Willoughby, had recently returned from a diplomatic mission to Denmark.
OXFORD He recounted in detail the royal court at Elsinore: the feasting, the floor-to-ceiling silk tapestries, the paintings of the last two kings, the arras, etc. I included his descriptions in Hamlet.
HOST I thought Hamlet was sourced from de Belleforest's Histoires Tragiques?
OXFORD Yes, but you've got to pay attention. I said included, not sourced.
HOST About histoires tragiques and the French, whatever happened to the Duke of Alcenon? Obviously, the queen and he never married.
OXFORD The rejected Alcenon demanded a large sum of money as recompense for squandering his time in a fruitless courtship. Our deceptive stingy queen agreed. When he departed, she paid him £10,000 with £50,000 more to follow. She paid dearly for her masked, half-hearted courtship.
HOST Back to Hamlet, it's your most autobiographical play. Obviously you are Hamlet. Extending your elaboration of characters, Hamlet is the combination of poet and lover and melancholy philosopher.
OXFORD Hamlet is contemplative, more interested in books than in retrieving his lost throne.
HOST In the play, you appear to confess your accumulated familial disappointments.
OXFORD Making me somewhat conflicted in writing the play.
HOST There are so many similarities between your life and Hamlet's, I hardly know where to begin.
OXFORD Why, at the beginning.
HOST The play opens with a ghost named ver, as in de Vere.
OXFORD The ghost of Hamlet's father King Hamlet, presumably murdered by his brother Claudius, who seized the throne.
HOST Alluding to the ghost, Thomas Lodge commented "the visard of the ghost which cried so miserably at the Theater like an oyster wife", importuning Hamlet to take revenge upon regicide.
OXFORD Obviously the ghost portrays my father, Gertrude my mother, Burghley is Polonius, Anne is Ophelia, my cousin Horace is Horatio, and of course I am Prince Hamlet the courtier. I portrayed Leicester as Claudius. Leicester confiscated part of my inheritance just as Claudius confiscates the throne. Hamlet is denied his rightful succession to the throne just as the Windsor's sued me trying to deny me my rightful succession to the earldom.
HOST King Claudius marries Hamlet's widowed mother Gertrude, who becomes queen again.
OXFORD Married in most wicked speed, as my mother had quickly remarried after my father died.
HOST Burghley controlled his 15 year old daughter Anne, proposed as your bride. Polonius controls his 15 year old daughter Ophelia, intended as Hamlet's bride.
OXFORD Sweet and innocent Anne couldn't cope with the exhibited contrasts between her father and me. Ophelia cannot cope with the two warring males in her life, her father Polonius and her prince Hamlet. Polonius undermines their love as did the Burghleys meddling into my marriage.
HOST You suspected your innocent wife of infidelity and Hamlet suspects sweet innocent Ophelia of the same.
OXFORD "Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shall not 'scape calumny".
HOST Hamlet speaks of a company of boy actors.
OXFORD Everyone knows I owned acting companies, including The Children of the Earl of Oxford.
HOST Growing up with your father's acting troupe, you sometimes changed his actor's lines.
OXFORD To entrap the murderous King Claudius, Hamlet changes some lines in the imbedded play, the Murder of Gonzago. In that play Hamlet is moved by the leading actor's Aeneas' speech. But Polonius is not moved at all, saying the speech was too long and that with tears falling from the actor's eyes he found his emotion excessive.
HOST Those words sound familiar.
OXFORD I used the same in my letter to Burghley, describing the St. Bartholomew's Eve massacre in Paris. I alluded to the Huguenot refugees as "French Aeneases recounting their tragedies with tears falling from their eyes". Dido's tale of the fall of Troy again.
HOST Hamlet's changes in the Gonzago play caught the conscience of King Claudius because he departs the room screaming with guilt. Is he mad?
OXFORD No, neither is Hamlet. I made him tentative and melancholy with ambiguous feelings, some erroneously think mad. I loved to titillate the audience.
HOST When Rosencrantz asks Hamlet why he's discontented, he responds with the proverb about the horse starving while the grass grows.
OXFORD Writing from Sienna, it was the same proverb I included in my letter to Burghley. I waited for money; Hamlet waits to ascend the throne.
HOST Then Polonius thinking Hamlet is mad asks him "Do you know me my lord"?
OXFORD Hamlet's mordant response "Excellent well, you are a fish monger", a direct gibe at Burghley's efforts to promote England's fishing industry by having Wednesday proclaimed a compulsory fish day.
HOST Growing up you caught Burghley's men spying on you and young Anne, but she denied the spying siding with her father.
OXFORD As does Ophelia siding with her father, denying to Hamlet that her father was spying on them.
HOST Later, Hamlet catches Polonius spying on him and eventually, though accidentally, kills him.
OXFORD In the play gravediggers mock Hamlet's killing of Polonius claiming "se offendendo"
HOST Self offense.
OXFORD I play on words I once used. Recall my argument with Burghley's undercook. I ran my rapier through his thigh. He died the next day and I claimed "se defendendo".
HOST Self defense, then there's Polonius' remark about "falling out at tennis".
OXFORD Reliving my argument with Sidney over playing rights at the queen's tennis court when I called him puppy.
HOST More similarities: Burghley disdained actors, so does Polonius. You were set upon by pirates, so is Hamlet. Cardanus Comfort, whose preface you wrote, is alluded to throughout the play, especially in Hamlet's soliloquy. Burghley was in the habit of giving advice to his son Robert, as does Polonius to his son Laertes.
OXFORD "Neither a borrower nor a lender be ... this above all, to thine own self be true". The latter precept, a sarcastic dig at me for concealing my name.
HOST Hamlet alludes to Frobisher's expedition via a north-northwest passage to the Orient.
OXFORD I lost money on that expedition so I have a frustrated Hamlet exclaim, "I am mad north-northwest".
HOST You recklessly ridiculed Burghley through Polonius. Any other playwright would have been punished, perhaps had his pen hand cut off or imprisoned. Also, your cousin Horace was your trusted friend. Horatio is Hamlet's trusted friend. The similarities accumulate to overwhelming evidence that Hamlet is you, including your own experiences.
OXFORD Execpt that Hamlet never had a Vavasor in his life. Burghley told me that the Vavasor affair, exacerbated by the Knyvet fray, ruined me in the queen's eyes.
HOST What about Sir Walter Raleigh's mediation on your behalf.
OXFORD Raleigh returned from Ireland where he defeated a small Papal-Spanish invasion force. He was my friend, a seafaring navigator, a soldier of fortune. The queen admiring his success was attracted by his tall good looks and courtly manners. She rewarded his victory with a profitable sinecure and granted him valuable properties. Having gotten the queen's attention, he put in a good word for me.
(OFFSTAGE It was reported Her Majesty came yesterday to Greenwich and the Earl of Oxford came unto her presence, and after some bitter words and speeches, in the end all sins were forgiven, and he may repair to the court at his pleasure. Master Raleigh was a great mean herein whereat Pondus is angry for that he could not do so much.)
HOST Who's Pondus?
OXFORD Burghley's nickname.
HOST The queen forgave your misdeed with Vavasor?
OXFORD Her antagonism sapped by Raleigh, she sprinkled me with her royal emollients infused with the perfumery of Tudor red rose petals. After 26 months of imprisonment, house arrest, and humiliation she pardoned me, readmitting me to court. Still, with great appreciation to Raleigh, my good name had fallen so low that I was rescued by a commoner.
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
...and so on (gestures with hand). Restored to court, my satisfaction was dulled by the death of the Earl of Sussex my father figure, mentor, and patron. At a dinner given by the queen, he and Leicester had quarreled bitterly.
HOST When he died, it was rumored Leicester had poisoned him.
OXFORD Leicester's consummate wickedness as a poisoner was well known. Recall the rumor about his wife being poisoned. An anonymous author described his corruption in the pamphlet Leicester's Commonwealth. It detailed his catering to sex with potent aphrodisiacs, the beast retiring to the lairage of the queen's bedchamber. It described his lechery debauching daughters of his tenant farmers and, when pregnant, buying abortionists and paying off their parents.
OXFORD Alluding to Claudius Hamlet cries treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain".
HOST A reference to Leiscester?
OXFORD Quite so.
HOST Why did the queen choose him when she could have had any man in England or Europe?
OXFORD De gustibus non est disputandum.
HOST I agree. There's no disputing one's tastes.
OXFORD Leicester spent great sums of money satisfying his depravities in true Roman fashion. Sussex warned me about Leicester. They were bitter religious and political enemies. Sussex once told me "Beware the gypsy, he will betray you. You do not know the beast as well as I do".
HOST Gypsy being Leicester?
OXFORD The queen's epithet for him. Sussex's death was a blow to the queen and me. The queen considered his death a terrible loss because he had been her loyal and devoted courtier, constantly warning her about Leicester. For me it meant the end of a filial relationship, father and son, patron and protege. In Richard II, I had Sussex in mind when portraying John of Gaunt. In Hamlet Sussex was the old King Hamlet whose memory was revered by young Prince Hamlet. After Sussex's funeral rites, the queen requested one of my entertainments at court to enliven her spirits. I presented her with A Historie of Ariodante and Genevora, my working version of the later Much Ado About Nothing.
HOST But after that, tenacious adversity dealt you and your wife another blow. She had at last given birth to a son but he died.
OXFORD I wondered if there would ever be an 18th Earl of Oxford.
HOST Your wife expressed the loss of her new born son by writing in verse four Epitaphes. Was she influenced by your writing?
OXFORD Hardly. She assumed her father's view that writing was a waste of time, except in state matters. She was so aggrieved over our son's death she expiated her grief in verse.
HOST John Soowthern published Pandora, containing your wife's Epitaphes, verses by the Queen, and others. Did writing run in your wife's family?
OXFORD Not hers, mine. Both my aunts, my father's sisters, married poets. Aunt Frances was herself a versifier and married Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. He developed the English sonnet and translated the Aeneid employing the first use of blank verse. I was fascinated by the Aeneid and the fall of Troy, battling to death on the plains of Hissarlik, the archetype of tragedy. I transposed the Dido-Aeneas love affair to my play Antony and Cleopatra.
HOST His English sonnet now called Shakespearean sonnet.
OXFORD Complying with the accepted code of noblemen, his works were not printed until 10 years after his death. Unfortunately his death came unexpectedly. Henry VIII in one of his rages, had him beheaded. My other aunt, Anne, married Lord Sheffield poet and musician. He wrote a book of sonnets in the Italian style. In the long winter nights, my uncles and aunts lodged with us at Castle Hedingham and my father's actors entertained us. My literary and theatrical interests evolved from those early years.
HOST Did you write any verses on the death of your son?
OXFORD I repressed my son's death by keeping busy in the theater. I acquired the sublease of the Blackfriar's Theater and transferred it to Lyly, my production manager.
HOST There's an interesting vignette about Lyly leasing a room at the Blackfiar's to an Italian swordsman.
OXFORD That would be the fencing instructor Rocco Bonetti "who was so excellent with the sword that he could hit any Englishman with a single thrust upon any button in his doublet". In Romeo and Juliet, I satirized Bonetti's fencing jargon in the repartee between Mercutio and Benvolio.
HOST Having neglected to invest in Drake's successful plunder of Spanish riches, you again gambled on a very risky business venture hoping to make a similar fortune.
OXFORD I outfitted my ship Edward Bonaventure and contributed it to Fenton's expedition to the West Indies. I heard there was gold there and hoped it would bring me riches. Unfortunately, Fenton failed to find anything of value and I again lost quite a sum.
HOST In fact it impoverished you.
OXFORD Anne complained to her father that we had been reduced to 3 or 4 servants. He complained to me that his Tannikin was not used to such impoverishment.:
(OFFSTAGE Oxford, you keep my Tannikin short of money, treating her shabbily, forcing your countess to frequently attend court where she is provided with food and shelter under my protection. You spend your patrimony on Italian luxuries, on supporting your lewd associates, indigent poets, writers, and promising young actors. In prosperity, you are the cause of our adversity. Now that you are ruined, we are only made partakers of it and by no means, not by the bitter tears of my wife, can we obtain a spark of favor from you. You're arrogant, unstable, self-centered, a poor father and worse husband. You have no head for managing money, you impoverish your family investing in reckless schemes for quick riches. On the whole, you're a pitiful provider.)
OXFORD Burghley then informed the queen of our relative poverty and petitioned her to grant me a yearly stipend.
HOST Why would the queen reward your profligacy?
OXFORD Producing plays for her entertainment was expensive.
HOST Why were you so generous to others and not to your family?
OXFORD Now you're being provocative. While I traveled the Continent, why did Burghley treat me like a commoner begging for money?
HOST You were getting even?
OXFORD I'm reminded of Bertram's rejection of Helena in All's Well, Posthumus' casting aside of Imogen in Cymbeline, Angelo repudiating Mariana in Measure, Hamlet driving Ophelia mad, Othello murdering Desdemona, and Leontes condemning Hermione in Winter's Tale.
HOST That play has a statue of Hermione transmogrified from marble to human, considered one of Shakespeare's problems.
OXFORD Keep in mind that Winter's Tale is a tale. I simply did 400 years ago what your modern technology did to me today, a miraculous reconstruction.
HOST In the fall of that year there was another plot against the queen. She declared the Spanish Ambassador Mendoza persona non grata and threw him out of England.
OXFORD My cousin Henry Howard, his nephew Philip Howard, and others were jailed but released for lack of evidence. But Philip Howard converted to Catholicism and was caught trying to flee England. He was imprisoned in the Tower and died there 10 years later. The queen had no sympathy for traitors, especially if they were Catholic.
HOST The gravity of the plot was relieved somewhat when your company of actors toured the countryside including Stratford.
OXFORD In some towns, officials gave my actors a few shillings not to perform just to get my vagabonds out of town. At year's end, I performed at court Agamemnon and Ulysses my early version of Troilus and Cressida.
HOST Lyly's Sapho and Phoa, an allegory of the Duke of Alcenon's courtship of the queen, was performed at court. I understand it was one of several plays on which you and he collaborated.
OXFORD I didn't want my name associated with it for obvious reasons, so Lyly subscribed his name to it.
HOST Then you performed at court Campaspe, again attributed to Lyly.
OXFORD Another collaboration. Shortly after that, I took over the Earl of Worcester's acting company. Together with my acting company, Oxford's Boys, we performed in and around London.
HOST There was a rumor those plays were written by a mysterious lord known only as Shakespeare.
OXFORD I tolerated the rumor as a cover for my anonymity.
HOST About this time Robert Greene published Greene's Card of Fancy dedicated to you, citing you as a true Maecenas and pre-eminent writer.
OXFORD An accomplished writer Greene, one of my proteges.
HOST That year 1584 you were 34 and Bridget was born, your second daughter.
OXFORD Still no heir, still no 18th earl.
HOST On quite another matter, having sold most of your estates you led a Spartan life compared to other earls. Yet, in spite of your inept management of money, you managed to buy a huge folly of a mansion while still maintaining Vere House. Tell me about Fisher's Folly, your white elephant.
OXFORD White elephant?
HOST An extravagant possession of dubious value.
OXFORD I wanted a suitable mansion should the queen visit, as she had when I was a boy at Castle Hedingham. Also, it was big enough to quarter my writer friends.
HOST It was reported you escaped the envious machinations and vicious rumors of your enemies by writing and squandering your patrimony on a Bohemian lifestyle, partying with your lewd friends, and whores both female and male.
OXFORD I tried to live my own life, not theirs. For brief sabbaticals we made follies of our new Fisher's Folly.
HOST On a more serious matter, Sturmius, leader of Protestants in the Netherlands and Rhineland, visited England to appeal to the queen for help because towns there were falling to Catholics led by the Duke of Parma.
OXFORD He offered the queen sovereignty over the Netherlands and she wisely refused. Imagine trying to keep peace there as well as in Ireland and Scotland. Then he suggested that she send an expeditionary force to be led by Leicester, Sidney, or me. I refused to serve under them and they under me. There was much court intrigue about whom should command. Burghley favored Leicester because if I were killed there would be no 18th earl.
HOST The queen finally approved a force of several thousand English soldiers with Leicester in command.
OXFORD A descendant of the fighting de Veres, I requested that I too be given a military command. At last she agreed to give me command of her cavalry. Additionally, I needed to put an end to the rumor that I was a Catholic sympathizer by fighting against them. After all, my uncle had been beheaded for the same allegation.
HOST But during the campaign she unexpectedly recalled you.
OXFORD Aggrieved and disappointed I returned to England. On the way, my ship was attacked by Dutch pirates. The second time I'd been attacked by pirates. They must have gotten word there was an earl on board, reason enough for noblemen to dress down and remain anonymous. Even so, I lost most of my baggage. Burghley protested to the Dutch but nothing came of it. Back in court the queen hinted she recalled me because she was disinclined to loose the services of her court poet and playwright. Do you know whom she sent to replace me? Philip Sidney another court poet! denying me my dream of achieving military fame, of extending the military exploits of the de Veres who had been swordsmen to kings for 500 years. When I complained about being recalled, a courtier sardonically remarked "dulce bellum inexpertis", war is magnificent for those who never tried it.
HOST Today that maxim is most applicable to our president Clinton. Eschewing military service, he never tried war but was quick to send troops to foreign lands. And then to prove his valor and patriotism, ordered the bombing of an aspirin factory in the Sudan.
OXFORD But as applied to me, the maxim meant that being a coward I recalled myself, another lie! Furious, I challenged Sidney to a duel. The queen intervened informing him that it was she who had recalled me. I voiced my displeasure through Othello who was replaced by Casio, the one he most resented:
Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell,
Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear piercing fife,
The royal banner and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
Perhaps the queen was prescient when she recalled me because Sidney was killed in battle. The fighting continued with no apparent success. Then Leicester incurred the queen's wrath by naming himself Governor General of the Netherlands.
HOST Without her permission?
OXFORD Of course, she would never approve. He did it to get all its income and profits. The Leicester's had a very long history of confiscating properties for profit. Having failed his command, the queen recalled him. He was replaced by my cousins, Francis and Horatio, the fighting de Veres. They were accompanied by our friend Roger Williams, a soldier of exceptional courage and daring who admired the military discipline of Roman legions. I characterized him as Fluellen in Henry V.
HOST I have a note here indicating you again protested to Burghley about his men spying on you.
OXFORD Ever since my return from the Netherlands I caught one or more of his men surveilling me, watching my every move.
HOST Why?
OXFORD He wanted to control me, the which I have Polonius spying on Hamlet.
HOST You found relief from the spying when the queen celebrated her success in the Netherlands. She celebrated the victory on the anniversary of her coronation day by holding a jousting tournament, your third.
OXFORD (stands and draws rapier) Here comes Oxford! guilty of carnal dalliance with one of the queen's maids-of-honor, punished by her majesty's wrath, pardoned by her motherly instinct, the Italianate dandy, the flawed revenant baits the queen's champions daring to challenge them. I instructed my men to accept all wagers. At first, they were hesitant because I was so much in debt and hadn't jousted in years but then, advisedly, they complied. Again and again I hit or unhorsed my challengers. Io triumphe! Once more I heard shouts of "Oxford, shake spear! Oxford, shake spear"!
HOST So the disgraced destitute Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford made his comeback.
OXFORD The queen presented me with my third consecutive prize and having won all those wagers my finances were much enhanced with pounds, deeds, escheats, and promissory notes. Shortly after my victory, the queen requested another of my entertainments.
HOST You were known to be a daring investor, actually a gambler. You sold seven more estates and bought two.
OXFORD My wife considered most distasteful my recklessness in managing money. My business transactions were incomprehensible to her father, a possessive controller. He controlled his daughter and wanted control over his errant son-in-law. That’s why he spied on me. He actually sent one of his men to ferret out some information from one of my men. Furious at his impertinence, I wrote him a letter:
My Lord, This other day your man, Stainner, told me that you sent for Amis, my man, and if he were absent that Lyly should come unto you. I sent Amis, for he was in the way. And I think it very strange that your Lordship should enter into that course towards me; whereby I must learn that which I knew not before, both of your opinion and good will towards me. But I pray, my Lord, leave that course, for I mean not to be your ward nor your child. I serve Her Majesty, and I am that I am; and by alliance near to your Lordship, but free; and scorn to be offered that injury to think I am so weak of government as to be ruled by servants, or not able to govern myself. If your Lordship take and follow this course you deceive yourself, and make me take another course that I have not yet thought of.
HOST And Burghley's answer?
OXFORD I don't recall but I serve her Majesty only. I am that I am, can one be clearer? It reminds me of another time I had to avow myself – "ipse dixit" - he himself said it. I believe I inserted that in As You Like It.. I further alluded to my emotions in King Lear who, forbidden by his daughter to maintain his retainers, cries out:
I will do such things
What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth!
HOST The next year 1585 began with the rumor of another Spanish plot to overthrow the queen.
OXFORD Burghley dispatched his men throughout London and elsewhere to find evidence of the plot. The parsimonious queen was keen to keep England solvent, to have a robust treasury ready to fend off any Spanish threat. Good public manners breeds good public means. In my case the queen, who loved the theater, granted me an annuity of £1,000 to be paid directly from the Treasury, thus bypassing Burghley.
HOST As I understand it the purchasing power of the pound in your time was hundreds of times greater than it is today.
OXFORD My good fortune. The annuity in return for my patriotic plays satirizing the Spanish king in order to prepare the people for possible war with Spain.
HOST She put you to work writing and producing patriotic plays satirizing the Spanish?
OXFORD While appreciating her annuity, I found it a source of shame that a de Vere had been hired under contract like a common tradesman to produce at least 2 plays a year. Complying with her wishes, my actors satirized the Spanish Ambassador who stormed out of court. Later, King Philip II of Spain was reported to have indignantly exclaimed that the queen would pay dearly for her entertainments at his expense. Adding that "to convert England to Catholicism, Spain had to control the seas". Irritated by yet another Spanish threat, our wily and calculating queen immediately ordered the building of fast, sleek war galleons with large bore canon.
HOST About that time you received a letter reopening an old wound. You were challenged to a duel by Thomas Vavasor, brother of Anne Vavasor your former paramour.
OXFORD A letter challenging me to a duel seeking retribution for my having tamped his sister, a rather insolent letter:
(OFFSTAGE If thy body had been as deformed as thy mind is dishonorable, my house had yet been unspotted, and thyself remained with thy cowardice unknown. I speak this that I fear thou art so much wedded to that shadow of thine, that nothing can force to awake thy base and sleepy spirits. Is not the revenge taken of thy victims sufficient, but will thou yet use unworthy instruments to provoke my unwilling mind: Or dost thou fear thyself, and therefore hast thou sent thy forlorn kindred, whom as thou has left nothing to inherit so thou dost thrust them into thy shameful quarrels? If it be so then stay at home thyself and send my abuses; but if there be yet any spark of honour left in thee, or iota of regard of thy decayed reputation, use not thy birth for an excuse, for I am a gentleman, but meet me thyself alone and thy lackey to hold thy horse. For weapons I leave them to thy choice for that I challenge, and the place to be appointed by us both at our meeting, which I think may conveniently be Nunnington. Thyself shall send me word by this bearer, by whom I expect an answer.)
OXFORD A petulant young man, a hot head, reminded me of my younger self when, with my rapier, I dispatched Cecil's undercook. Wanting to rid myself of all remnants of that affair, and as his social superior, I disregarded the letter.
HOST The next year, at 36, hoping to enhance your impecunious position, you asked the queen for a trading monopoly.
OXFORD Trading monopolies and grants of land were the frugal queen's usual method of rewarding her subjects for their services, thereby avoiding cash distributions from her treasury. She denied my request. The rumor was that Burghley did not advocate for my preferment because adding to my finances would probably mean increased patronage of actors and writers while ignoring the needs of my family.
HOST Meanwhile, there continued fortuitous dedications to you by more of your contemporary writers. Angel Day claimed you as, "one whose infancy from beginning was ever sacred to the Muses". William Webb claimed you "the most excellent of court poets".
OXFORD They, the literati, knew of my work.
HOST Now to a most serious matter, Mary Queen of Scots the queen’s first cousin.
OXFORD In Scotland her half-brother James Stewart usurped her authority and took over custody of her son, our future King James I. She escaped to England in the hope of getting the queen's help. Fearing a plot by Mary Queen of Scots to rally to her cause Catholics in England and abroad, our queen placed her under house arrest. Then under Burghley's direction, Walsingham's secret service discovered such a plot in the making. Mary Queen of Scots was charged with conspiracy and rebellion.
HOST Then in October 1586 the queen ordered you to sit on the tribunal of noblemen for the trial of her cousin.
OXFORD Foremost in rank among peers of the realm, my name was first on the queen's list of noblemen. In her trial prosecuted by Burghley, Mary Queen of Scots defended herself with heroic ability, courage, and passion. Bulldog Burghley was not persuaded by her arguments and the tribunal found her guilty, the punishment death. I pleaded with the queen to spare her. My pleading was joined by the Scots, French, and others. She ignored our pleas. The guilty verdict disposed our queen to the long agony of indecision in signing the death warrant. She still had feelings for her cousin, the anointed Queen of Scots. Vacillating, our queen could not bring herself to sign her cousin's death warrant.
HOST But in the end she signed it.
OXFORD Burghley persuaded her to convene parliament, which petitioned her to proceed forthwith. He drew up the death warrant and slipped it into a stack of documents requiring the queen's signature. When her jeweled hand encountered it, she delicately fingered the pen and in an elaborate Italianate flourish subscribed her signature. When, for consolation, the doomed Catholic queen requested a priest Burghley denied her. He even denied her the last rites of the Catholic Church. Dressed in the scarlet raiment of a religious martyr, and with defiant pride, she faced the executioner's broadaxe in February 1587. Related by blood to the queen Tudor nobility had reason to be wary. She had beheaded my uncle, her distant relative, and now her cousin.
HOST And again, you and your father-in-law were on opposite sides, a love-hate relationship, oil and water, on and off.
OXFORD I reproached Burghley for his assiduous prosecution, exacerbating our already problematic relationship. My wife, again pregnant, was reduced to dolour and incessant weeping. But I was surprised when the queen displayed some resentment against Burghley for his resolute prosecution in beheading her cousin. Sensing the queen's vulnerability, the Machiavellian Leicester suggested that she confine Burghley in the Tower making him, Leicester, her chief minister. Wisely, the queen balked at such a drastic move. She was equivocal but not stupid.
HOST Eventually, Burghley and the queen reconciled.
OXFORD In the end, Burghley and the queen reconciled with her agreement to visit him at his huge mansion, Theobalds. But the abhorrence of that execution was an intaglio in my memory. I alluded to it in several plays. Bolingbroke never forgave himself for having Richard II murdered in his cell. In The Merchant of Venice, I thought of Mary Queen of Scots' poetic defense of herself when writing Portia's "quality of mercy speech". In that speech an Italian lady pleads to the old Jew Shylock for the life of a merchant she had never before seen.
HOST It's claimed the Merchant is based on Marlowe's Jew of Malta.
OXFORD I sourced the play from a tale I heard while visiting Venice. There, I learned the word ghetto came from the Venetian isle where Jews were forced to live. In that play, Bassanio borrows 3,000 ducats from Shylock, the loan being cosigned by Antonio. Numerically, it's the 3,000 amount you borrowed from Lok. The play also includes two of your favorite themes, strong male bonding between Antonio and Bassanio, and cross-dressing by Portia and Jessica. Shylok's daughter Jessica betrays him and Judaism. She steals jewels and gold from him, elopes to marry Lorenzo, and converts to Catholicism.
HOST Did that subplot sprout from your hidden desire to become Catholic?
OXFORD No, no.
HOST In The Two gentlemen of Verona there is more male bonding and cross-dressing by females. The two gentlemen are Proteus and Valentine, their two gentlewomen Julia and Sylvia.
OXFORD It's not that simple. If it were, there would be no play. Julia loves Proteus who loves Sylvia who loves Valentine. Proteus vainly woos Sylvia, so Valentine offers to give her to him.
HOST What, a comedy about bartering his woman to preserve their male bond?
OXFORD Not quite, Julia cross-dresses thereby attracting the male-bonding Proteus.
HOST Today, a woman in men's clothing is considered a lesbian or bisexual.
OXFORD In my time boys portrayed women who then impersonated males, simply a disguise, a common dramatic convention. In the end all are reconciled. Julia gets Proteus and Sylvia gets Valentine.
HOST Your common attitude toward women, and your feelings of remorse towards Anne, appear in several of your plays such as Measure for Measure.
OXFORD My version of Measure is based on a Parisian affair. I merely changed the names Angenoust to Angelo, Claude Tonard to Claudio, and so on. Angelo is husband by pre-contract to Mariana, which contract he broke because she fell short of his expectations. He disvalued her and didn't speak with her for 5 years.
HOST Sounds like the separation from your wife.
OXFORD My wife forgave me and Mariana forgives Angelo remarking:
They say best men are moulded out of faults,
And, for the most, become much the better
For being a little bad.
HOST In that play, Angelo arrests and imprisons Claudio for impregnating his lover Juliet. But Angelo turns out a worse sinner than Claudio. Is there a parallel here between Angelo and the putative virgin queen who imprisoned you over the Vavasor affair?
OXFORD It's a matter of interpretation isn't it? When one has been treated unfairly, vengeful emotions may linger making them difficult to forget, sometimes impossible to expunge.
HOST You continued receiving praise from your contemporaries. For example, from William Webbe:
(OFFSTAGE I may not omit the deserved commendations of many honourable and noble Lords and Gentlemen in Her majesty's Court, which, in the rare devices of poetry, have been and yet are most skillful; among whom the right honourable Earl of Oxford may challenge to himself the title of the most excellent among the rest.)
HOST The next year, 1587, you were searching for university wits to participate in the queen's patriotic propaganda campaign against the Spanish.
OXFORD I discovered Philip Marlowe had dramatic ability, so I added him to my group of writers. We performed his Tamburlaine for the public to show what it could expect from a ruthless monarch like the king of Spain. In fact, Spanish ships were mustering at the seaport of Cadiz.
HOST For an attack on England?
OXFORD Probably, but the queen was prepared. She sent her favorite knighted pirate, the ravenous Drake, to attack the port. He destroyed the Spanish ships then pillaged Lisbon and the Azores. His successful assaults delayed the Armada by at least a year, giving England time to build up its fleet of war galleons with large bore cannon.
HOST Getting back to Marlowe, scholars point out that there are similarities in your Arden of Feversham, Henry VI, and Marlowe's Edward II.
OXFORD Marlowe was part of my writing group.
HOST Lines in his plays are similar to lines in your plays. Some say too similar for mere coincidence. What about that? For example:
Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus:
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?
Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida:
Whose price hath launch'd above a thousand ships
Marlowe’s Tamburlaine:
Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia
What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day?
Shakespeare’s Henry IV:
And hollow pampered jades of Asia
Which cannot go but thirty miles a day
Marlowe’s Jew of Malta:
I hold there is no sin but ignorance
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night:
I say there is no darkness but ignorance
Marlowe’s Jew of Malta:
But Stay! What star shines yonder in the East
The lodestar of my life, if Abigail.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet:
But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
OXFORD Your notes omit the fact that I kept a notebook of lines to be used if and when needed.
HOST Meaning?
OXFORD We sometimes collaborated, searching my notebook for appropriate lines.
HOST There are scholars who make a point of the similarities between Shakespeare's Richard II and Marlowe's Edward II.
OXFORD Naturally! I began Edward II then gave it to Marlowe. He completed the play and published it as his own.
HOST Didn't that upset you, that he named himself the author.
OXFORD No, I gave it to him to do at his own discretion whatever he desired.
HOST Marlowe's style is also apparent in Shakespeare's Richard III and Julius Caesar.
OXFORD I repeat, we collaborated.
HOST Scholars also point out that you influenced Lyly who influenced Kyd who wrote The Spanish Tragedy, which contains language similar to Hamlet.
OXFORD Lyly, Marlowe, and Kyd were writers in my group. Furthermore, at one time or other, they were members of my household.
HOST Making it difficult to ascertain the true author?
OXFORD They normally reworked my manuscripts from foul papers to fair copies.
HOST Speaking of your household, there was another birth. .Your wife gave birth to a daughter Susan. Thereafter, you continued as real estate baron selling and buying estates.
OXFORD Baron? Am I now to be demoted by my host?
HOST In modern usage baron is a metaphor for a powerful manipulator of real estate. Now we come to 1588. It was the most momentous year for England and for you the year your wife died.
OXFORD My wife died of fever while visiting the Royal Palace in Greenwich. Unfortunately, I was out on my ship. She was only 32.
HOST Several elegies were written in her honor. One elegy reads in part:
And happy father of so good a child,
And happy husband of so true a wife,
And happy earth for such a virtuous wight,
But happy she thus happily to die.
What’s astounding is that that you, her husband, weren't listed among the mourners at her funeral.
OXFORD I was out on the open sea, captaining my ship Edward Bonaventure, testing her large bore cannon, preparing for the inevitable Spanish attack. But I was somewhat remorsed that, when I had the opportunity, I didn't find her blameless in the paternity rumor. However, my absence was not without merit. On her gravestone my wife memorialized her father. I wasn't even mentioned!
HOST Wasn't that natural because of the way you treated her?
OXFORD What's natural is for a husband to come before a father. Even in death, deliberate marital dysfunction. Later, Burghley martyred her with a tomb in St. Nicholas Chapel. There in Westminster Abbey she lies beside her mother. Nearby is a monument to my 3 daughters kneeling in prayer, probably praying for me to stay away.
HOST They’re still there in Westminster Abbey. The death of your wife exacted another familial surprise.
OXFORD With my total involvement in writing and the theater Burghley, not trusting my parenting of my own daughters, his now motherless granddaughters, suggested I give him custody. I agreed, transferring the ownership of Castle Hedingham to a trust with Burghley as trustee. For all our differences, Burghley was a good provider. We settled on my support for my 3 daughters. I allude to this in King Lear, whose intention was to give his kingdom to his 3 daughters. But the reality was that, for obvious reasons of preserving my anonymity as author, I withheld from my daughters the greater part of my kingdom, my poems and plays.
HOST You said you regretted not having absolved your wife of sexual slander. It's a common theme in several of your plays including Cymbeline and Othello.
OXFORD British King Cymbeline proposes his daughter Imogen marry his new queen's son by a previous marriage. Imogen refuses then secretly marries Posthumus, who's exiled by the king. Exiled in Rome, Posthumus hears Imogen is unfaithful and denounces her. In fact, he plans to murder her. When Cymbeline fails to pay tribute to Rome, its legions joined by Posthumus invade Britain. But Posthumus dresses as a British peasant and fights for England. Cross-dressed, Imogen finds Posthumus, explains her innocence, and they are reconciled.
HOST A repeat of the reconcilation with your wife. You used Giraldi Cinthio's Italian tale, Othello, to describe the sexual slander whereby a jealous husband murders his innocent wife. In Cymbeline and Othello, were you expiating your own guilt over the sexual slander of your wife?
OXFORD Perhaps, how does one avoid inserting his thoughts in his writing? It's what differentiates writers.
HOST Then on 19July1588, probably the most memorable day of the queen's reign, England's sovereignty was threatened when hundreds of Spanish ships were sighted sailing towards England's Lizard point. It was reported that:
(OFFSTAGE ...The queen forthwith commands more ships to sea, whereupon, yet in voluntary manner, the Earls of Oxford, Northumberland, and Cumberland, Sir Thomas Cecil, Sir Robert Cecil, Sir Walter Raleigh ... committed themselves unto the present chance of war... with ships hired at their own charges, they joined themselves in great numbers with the fleet, with generous alacrity, and incredible courage ...).
OXFORD At my own expense, I converted my ship to a warship with large bore cannon to fight for England "this blessed plot, this earth, this England". I put an end to the question of my sympathy towards Catholicism. In England Catholics supported the queen, proving they could practice the religion of the Church of Rome while defending England with patriotism and unquestioned loyalty.
HOST But while you were engaged at sea, the queen again unexpectedly recalled you. A repeat of your sudden recall from the Netherlands.
OXFORD Depriving me once more of my rightful share of glory in England's greatest naval victory.
HOST It was reported that she offered you the governorship of Harwich, together with 2,000 men for its defense. But you refused the Harwich consolation prize. Why did you refuse?
OXFORD I didn't want Harwich, there was no glory there. The glorious battle was at sea, not in England. As a fighting de Vere I wanted military glory. The de Veres had been victorious swordsmen to kings for 500 years. Were their noble and valiant military exploits to end with the 17th earl? England must not be ruled by Spain, by foreignors. Remember foreign born emperors ignored Res Romana, which eventually brought down Rome.
HOST The Spanish Armada was decisively defeated. John Lyly wrote a poem about your valiant seamanship. Following is one of his stanzas:
De Vere whose fame and loyalty hath pierced
The Tuscan clime, and through the Belgike lands
By winged Fame for valour is rehearsed,
Like warlike Mars upon the hatches stands.
His tusked Boar 'gan foam for inward ire,
While Pallas filled his breast with warlike fire.
OXFORD Shortly after the Armada was defeated, Leicester died. The queen lost her longtime proxy husband. Although the queen grieved over her loss, I and others rejoiced that the beast, the villain, her gypsy was gone.
HOST Your wife having died, and the Spanish Armada defeated, you again withdrew from court and public life.
OXFORD I finally gave up my martial zeal, replacing my sword with words.
HOST Speaking of writing, Munday published his Romances of Chivalry, all dedicated to you. Then Greene published his Pandosta, which tells almost the same story as The Winter's Tale.
OXFORD We were collaborators.
HOST You played a prominent role in celebrating England's victory over the Armada.
OXFORD The royal procession to St. Paul's for thanksgiving service included archbishops, peers of the realm, and other prominents. As Lord Great Chamberlain I was one of six peers to bear the queen's canopy.
HOST I understand Robert Devereux was also in attendance.
OXFORD That would be my friend, the handsome auburn-haired 2nd Earl of Essex. I remember he was hovering near the mightily pomped and perfumed queen.
HOST It was rumored they became lovers.
OXFORD A love affair between a doting 55 year old spinster and a 21 year old spoiled brat. In the odious immorality of her old age, she lusted after young men. He was a suave but impulsive courtier, a hot head, reminiscent of me in my youth. She appointed him Commander of Cavalry.
HOST Later he secretly married Philip Sidney's widow.
OXFORD He did and when the queen found out she had violent tantrums, raging throughout her quarters. In one of her rages she pulled off her bed covers throwing them about, smashed her wash basin, then handing a sword struck violent blows at her bedchamber's arras renting it asunder. If Essex were present, she'd have struck him a blow with her sword. You don't embarrass an autocratic queen without consequent result.
HOST In 1589 you were 39 and again deeply in debt. You met a distant relative William Cornwallis, a descendant of your 13th earl. He expressed interest in buying your folly of a mansion, Fisher's Folly.
OXFORD Outfitting my ship for the Armada put me deeply in debt, so I surreptitiously sold it to him.
HOST Surreptiously?
OXFORD Without Burghley's involvement. You see, 18 after my marriage, Burghley was suing me for the balance of his marriage fee. When I balked at paying, the tenacious miser seized some of my estates. That done I never let him get his hands on the sales proceeds of Fisher's Folly.
HOST There's an interesting story about that sale. When the Cornwallis' moved in, his daughter Anne found some of your poems in the library. It appears your life is told, in part, by the tales of your 3 Anne's. There was…
OXFORD My girl bride Anne, more sister to me than wife. The Anne of my excursive love who bore my son but not my heir. Lastly, the Anne who found my book of poems.
(OFFSTAGE When Anne Cornwallis found Oxford's book of poems in the library, she copied them into her own book. Among the poems copied were Verses Made by the Earl of Oxford: Anne Vavasor's Echo and the Passionate Pilgrim by W. Shakespeare. Once more Oxford had identified himself W. Shakespeare. Unfortunately, those originals were lost. Keep in mind, those poems were found in Oxford's vacated library, not in Stratford nor in any place in which Shaxpere lived.)
HOST Having sold Fisher's Folly, you still had debts.
OXFORD My continuing indebtedness forced me to sell Vere House in London and give up my company of actors, but I still supported my group of writers.
HOST About writers, Thomas Nashe wrote the preface to Greene's Menaphon. In it he alluded to "whole Hamlets of tragical speeches" inferring you had already written Hamlet.
OXFORD I gave Hamlet to Lyly who usually copied my original manuscripts, but he may have given it to Nashe.
HOST George Harvey was at it again, calling Lyly your minion secretary.
OXFORD Still jealous because I didn't offer him the job.
HOST The book, The Arte of English Poesie, was published anonymously. Was that yours?
OXFORD No, no. Many books were published anonymously even though printers knew the real authors. With total disregard for wishes of the real authors, printers usually wrote prefaces claiming that the manuscripts accidentally came into their possession.
HOST Many scholars assume The Arte of English Poesie was written by George Puttenham. In that book the printer's preface alludes to noblemen who write and conceal their names. He mentioned you:
(OFFSTAGE Among the nobility or gentry as may be very well seen in many laudable sciences and especially in making poesie, it is so come to pass that they have no courage to write and if they have are loath to be known of their skill. So as I know many notable gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably, and suppressed it again, or else suffered it to be published without their own names to it; as if it were a discredit for a gentleman to seem learned, and to show himself amorous of any good art...And in her Majesty's time that now is are sprung up another crew of Courtly poets, Noblemen and Gentlemen of Her Majesty's own servants, who have written excellently well as it would appear if their doings could be found out and made public with the rest, of which number is first that noble gentleman Edward Earl of Oxford.)
HOST Let's talk about Love's Labor's Lost sourced on episodes of the French Court of Navarre.
OXFORD I changed the names Marshal Brion to Berowne, Duke de Maine to Dumaine, de la Mothe Fenelon to Moth, etc. Armado is based on the eccentric Italian I met at Elizabeth's court. The portrayals by several characters correspond to conventional figures of the Commedia dell'Arte: Armado the bragging soldier, Moth a page and one of the zanni, Holofernes the pedant, and so on.
HOST The title describes the action. Everyone is in love but no one gets married. It's a play of scintillating language profused with puns and intrigues appreciated by knowledgeable courtiers.
OXFORD Based in part on the absurd social conduct of a Russian delegation at Elizabeth's court and written expressly to entertain her. In fact, the flirtatious banter between the lovers Berowne and Rosaline parallels the sometime brilliant riposte at court between the queen and me, much to her delight.
HOST What about your withdrawal from court, retirement?
OXFORD At age 40 I retreated to Billesley Hall, one of the properties in the Avon valley owned by my grandmother Elizabeth Trussel.
HOST I've noted that one of the rooms in Billesley Hall is named the Shakespeare Room.
OXFORD I daringly named it the Shakespeare Room because I did my writing there. When my grandmother died she bequeathed me her other property, the nearby Bilton Hall. The two estates are in the Avon valley near Stratford and border the Forest of Arden. There, I found solace and refuge from my financial and social troubles. In retreat, I had quiet time to read, write, and revise.
HOST Is that where the Shakespeare controversy originated, in the Avon Valley?
OXFORD I repeat, there was no controversy. It’s of your own making.
HOST But it was common to both of you.
OXFORD Shall we continue?
HOST If it pleases you. Well, there in the Avon valley, you continued your generous patronage of writers, who called you Sweet Swan of Avon.
OXFORD It was there I completed As You Like It, a play finding serenity and reward in nature among the stout and umbrageous oaks of Arden. The play's original setting was the Ardennes Forest in France. My setting was the nearby Forest of Arden.
HOST In his writings Edmund Spenser joined other prominent writers in complimenting you. In his Faerie Queene he writes a commendatory poem signed Ignoto, alluding to an unknown author. In your case, to a pseudonymous author. The first stanza is:
To look upon a work of rare device
The which a workman setteth out to view,
And not to yield it the deserved price
That unto such a workmanship is due,
Doth either prove the judgement to be naught,
Or else doth show a mind with envy fraught.
OXFORD An allusion to my Shakespeare. Spenser and I were friends. We tributed each others' poems.
HOST Spenser's book of Complaints includes The Teares of the Muses in which Thalia, the Muse of comedy, laments the absence of a single excellent playwright called Willy:
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late;
With whom all joy and jolly merriment
Is also deaded, and in dolour drent.
But that same general spirit, from whose pen
Large streams of honnie and sweete nectar flowe,
Scorning the boldness of such base-born men,
Which dare their follies so rashlie throwe,
Doth rather sit in idle cell
Than so himself to mockerie to sell.
HOST Is "Our pleasant Willy" the William of Shakespeare?
OXFORD Probably.
HOST What about "who is dead of late"?
OXFORD Probably alludes to my retirement at Bilton Hall.
HOST What about "from whose pen large streams of honnie and sweete nectar flowe"?
OXFORD It’s what I was doing at Bilton Hall, still writing.
HOST And the verse "Scorning the boldness of such base-born men"?
OXFORD Probably alludes to Willy being a nobleman.
HOST That allusion to Willy was made at a time when Shaxpere was 26, not retired, and his whereabouts unknown, all parts of the Shakespeare mystery.
OXFORD Of your own making.
HOST In May 1591, trying to increase your income, you petitioned the queen to grant your hereditary claim to the Forest of Essex.
OXFORD Part of my inheritance never received. I protested to the queen that its profits were improperly being withheld from me.
HOST You blamed the queen?
OXFORD She had the power to amend the wrong. Instead, she claimed her £1,000 annuity to me was enough. But she failed to mention I spent all of it, as well as my own money, on the theater and her entertainments, There were times I was forced to sell my estates to pay for them.
HOST You then petitioned the queen for a lump sum payment of £5,000 in lieu of her annuity and denial of your claim to the Forest of Essex.
OXFORD She denied me again. Her biting trenchant rejection branded my idea giddy and reckless. She brow beat me with bitter speeches for my impertinence.
HOST Why did you persist in the claim?
OXFORD Because it was part of my inheritance being denied me, very troubling. Also, I was thinking of marrying again, but not as a debtor.
HOST Speaking of trouble, the Troublesome Raigne of John King of England was published. Was that your King John?
OXFORD No, that came later.
HOST Writers continued dedicating their works to you. John Farmer published his Playn Song with dedication to you.
(1591-1603)
HOST Now the next year, at age 42, you married Elizabeth Trentham one of the queen's maids-of-honor, the daughter of a wealthy courtier. It was said that the queen readily approved because she was concerned about your welfare. At court you were ridiculed as a worthless, destitute nobleman recently rescued by a rich lady.
OXFORD Recently rescued? I knew Lady Trentham for about ten years and, after 4 years as widower, I thought it time to marry. After all, I didn't intend living mortified, alone like a monk in a cell, and I still wanted an heir to my title. We settled in Stoke Newington not far from two theaters, one simply named Theater and the other called Curtain. Her help in running our manor afforded me the time I needed for writing.
HOST About this time Arden of Feversham was published.
OXFORD Arden was a rewrite of my Murderous Michael written a dozen years earlier. I gave it to Marlowe to complete.
HOST The language in Arden is similar to that in Henry VI and Richard III.
OXFORD Obviously, we collaborated.
HOST In August you attended that infamous banquet with Greene and Nashe.
OXFORD Greene was sickened from a surfeit of pickled herring and Rhenish wine. He later died in the house of a poor shoemaker. Gabriel Harvey and Henry Chettle lost no time in pouring abuse on their literary enemy, the dead Greene.
HOST The cause of their abuse against Greene was his controversial pamphlet Greene's Groatsworth of Wit. The pamphlet is full of invectives against actors, playwrights, and Greene's own admission of his frivolous writing.
OXFORD Nonsense! Did you ever know a writer who trivialized his own writing? He never wrote Groatsworth; I would have known if he did. Whoever wrote Groatsworth was a coward, jealous of Greene, pouring abuse on a dead man.
HOST Do you think Chettle wrote it?
OXFORD Whoever wrote it didn't know Greene very well because he urges Greene's wife to care for his son Fortunatus. Greene's wife never bore Fortunatus, he was birthed by his prostitute lover.
HOST The pamphlet addresses 3 playwrights presumably Marlowe, Nashe, and Peele "who bore name to serve my lord".
OXFORD B-o-r-e being a pun on b-o-a-r the de Vere emblem.
HOST What about the phrases denigrating an actor as an "upstart crow" and "shake-scene", supposed allusions to the actor named Shaxpere.
OXFORD More nonsense! Those phrases probably refer to Edward Alleyn the actor-manager, whom the real Greene attacked as miserly for underpaying him and other playwrights. We all know a crow is loud and mocking and tears apart its food. In one performance Alleyn actually tore apart the boards of the stage, now that's a real shake-scene.
HOST Some claim those phrases could be allusions to the theater loving Southampton.
OXFORD Southampton was known to spend all his leisure time at theaters. It was reported that Southampton "come not to court but pass the time merely going to plays every day". He was a vociferous critic, a self-appointed director, and sometimes even jumped on stage inserting himself as actor, mise en scène.
HOST The pamphlet also alludes to "tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide".
OXFORD Alleyn probably roared out that line performing one of my versions of Henry VI.
HOST So why all the controversy over the Groatsworth pamphlet?
OXFORD Again, of your own making. Thomas Nashe, Greene's friend and fellow writer, called Groatsworth a trivial, lying pamphlet.
HOST Two months later, Chettle published his Kind-Harts Dreame, in which he regrets not having spared in Groatsworth the mysterious lord and playwright called Shakespeare. Did he mean Shaxpere?
(OFFSTAGE Shaxpere wasn't even in London when Groatsworth was published. In fact from 1585 to 1592, ages 21-28, are Shaxpere's lost years, his whereabouts unknown. Why didn't anyone know the whereabouts of the greatest and most popular playwright in London? Keep in mind that during those years, new plays by Shakespeare were being performed. Perhaps Shaxpere was in a cave hiding from tax collectors, writing plays, sending them via carrier pigeon to London).
HOST Your fellow writers Greene, Lyly, Marlowe, and Nashe were your lewd friends who partied at your mansion at Stoke Newington. What did your new wife, the Countess Elizabeth, say about your Bohemian lifestyle?
OXFORD Nothing, she discreetly absented herself from the doings, reappearing some time after the cock crowed.
HOST Gabriel Harvey, still smarting from your rejection of him as your secretary, published his Four Letters pouring abuse on you, Greene, Lyly, and Nashe. Nashe responded by publishing Strange News with Epistle Dedicatorie to Apis Lapis, who is called a copious poet and Maecenas to scholars. Apis Lapis?
OXFORD Another of our common metaphors. Apis a bull, castrated by lapis a stone. Taken together they allude to a castrated bull, an ox. My close friends sometimes called me by the nickname OX. Apis lapis you see.
HOST Nashe upbraided Harvey for "that lord you libelest" who in his college days, had given you gold coins.
OXFORD That would be at Cambridge where Harvey was a scholar and writer. I supported his work there by giving him money.
HOST Nashe continues "I and one of my fellows Will. Monox hast thou never heard of him and his great dagger", meaning?
OXFORD My writers sometimes called me Will or Willy, a common reference to poets, a name crossing class distinctions. Monox can be interpreted as "mon ox", my fellow Oxford. The great dagger, of course, is my Lord Great Chamberlain's Sword of State.
HOST What about the phrase "his verie friend".
OXFORD The word verie is a pun on my name Vere.
HOST Very confusing.
OXFORD Not to us.
HOST Nashe also referred to the playwright of Henry VI and Hamlet but didn't name him.
OXFORD Respecting my wishes to remain anonymous.
HOST Whether from respect for social status or privacy or fear of reprisal or libel, Elizabethan writers did not identify prominent persons. You were alluded to as Will, Willy, Apis Lapis, Monox, Maecenas, a shake speare, etc.
OXFORD It was safer to use metaphors, thereby avoiding law suits and other possible retribution.
HOST Then you got great news. In February 1593 your son was born.
OXFORD At last a titular heir, Henry de Vere, 18th Earl of Oxford.
HOST You named him Henry. Was that after Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton?
OXFORD My countess and I agreed on Henry. In order to leave him a large inheritance, I petitioned the queen for trading monopolies explaining that she would share the revenue from taxes on the monopolized items. She denied me. Then I offered to buy outright those monopolies. She denied me again and brow beat me for my insolence in not respecting her decision.
HOST Then in 1593, under the pen name William Shake-speare, you published the narrative poem Venus and Adonis.
OXFORD From Ovid's Metamorphoses, my favorite Roman poet. It was published by the same printer my uncle Arthur Golding used.
HOST The poem's title is subscripted by a Latin phrase which translated is: "Let the mob admire base things; may golden Apollo serve me full cups from the Castilian spring", the spring of poetry. The poem is addressed "To The Right Honorable Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield". About your young friend Southampton, he was 8 when his father died and he was placed, as you were, a royal ward in Burghley's care.
OXFORD Southampton had delicate features, golden tresses, was well educated. Later the Italian writer, John Florio, became his tutor and lived in his household. Burghley, Master of the Court of Wards, was a known match maker generating marriage fees accruing to his benefit. He proposed marriage between Southampton and my 15 year old daughter Elizabeth.
HOST The same whose birth began the rumor of your paternity?
OXFORD The same, but the young earl refused. I wrote several sonnets urging the lovely youth to marry, to carry on his house, but all in vain. Eventually Burghley fined the hesitant young earl a staggering £5,000, which he paid making Burghley that much richer. Southampton and I had much in common - both royal wards, well educated, love of theater, pursuit of military fame, free spenders, bad tempers. He reminded me of my youth. I was fond of the young lord.
HOST You wrote an intimate dedication to him. It was the first time William Shake-speare appeared in print as author. Why did you hyphenate Shake and speare?
OXFORD The hyphen signifies a pseudonym further defined by the lower case s in speare. Note that it was not printed on the title page where an author's name belongs but at the end of the dedication, another sign of a pseudonym.
HOST In the poem the immortal goddess of love, Venus, declares her sexual desire for the mortal and beautiful Greek androgynous youth Adonis. He rejects her advances but the older, sexually assertive and masculine Venus, aggressively pursues the immature and virginal Adonis. Could this be a metaphor for the older queen pursuing you in your youth?
OXFORD One of many interpretations.
HOST Eventually Venus' persistence overpowers Adonis who, abandoning his indifference, yields abetting her date rape. Following his compliance to her sexual demands Adonis is killed by a wild boar. Is this a metaphor alluding to your social death following your submission to love of your masculine queen?
OXFORD It's mythology or whatever pleases your imagination. Sometimes a boar can be a bore, b-o-r-e.
HOST Clergymen rebuked Shake-speare's apostasy in using Greek and Roman mythology. Why did you subscribe your pseudonym?
OXFORD I wanted my young friend to know Shake-speare was committed to him.
HOST He knew of you pseudonym?
OXFORD Certainly, the cognoscenti knew.
HOST Venus' role reversal is portrayed in many of your plays such as All's Well that Ends Well, As You Like It, Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, and Twelfth Night.
OXFORD Merely dramatic conventions.
HOST On another matter, Stratfordians claim that Shaxpere frequented the Mermaid Tavern. Couldn't he have gotten some plots and information on foreign travel from its patrons?
OXFORD Patrons as customers? You mean the putative Bard of Avon, drinking at the Mermaid Tavern, bombasted blank verse to his fellow bar flies whose drunken huzzahs and rasping ballads hailed him, "Verily Willy, a toast to you; thou art truly a Slick Willy". I don't think so.
HOST It was reported that Thomas Walsingham and Marlowe drank at the Boar's Head Tavern. Thomas Walsingham was brother to Francis Walsingham, head of the queen's secret service. Now before Marlowe joined your group of writers he was patronized by Thomas Walsingham. It was common knowledge they were lovers.
OXFORD It was so rumored.
HOST Rumor had it that at the Boar's Head Tavern, you and Marlowe argued over the affection of a friendly young man.
OXFORD A dastardly lie by a drunken lout.
HOST Wasn't Marlowe murdered in a brawl?
OXFORD He was. A tragedy, a prolific playwright murdered at the height of his dramatic power: Tamburlaine, Dr. Faustus, Jew of Malta, Edward II, Dido Queen of Carthage, all those great plays by age 29.
HOST I understand the brawl was over the availability of a young man, his homosexual lover.
OXFORD I don't know.
HOST You did write sonnets to a young man.
OXFORD Yes, but not to the young man at the Boar's Head.
HOST Let's talk about your sonnets. You wrote intimate sonnets to your young friend of high station and great beauty. Why did you publish Venus and Adonis but not your sonnets?
OXFORD Venus is an imagined narrative poem sourced from mythology. My sonnets are sourced from my personal feelings, they're personal, autobiographical. I kept them private, hiding them in my library.
HOST You wrote 154, quite a batch. Do you recall when you wrote them?
OXFORD A continuing endeavor, whenever I got the urge.
HOST You must have written some by 1598 because Meres referred to your "sugared sonnets" in his Palladis Tamia. Your plays are about royals and nobles; your sonnets are about you. Is that the big difference?
OXFORD Isn't it obvious? In plays I speak for each character. In sonnets I speak for myself.
HOST What about the sonnet format?
OXFORD Developed by my uncle Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.
HOST The dedication refers "to Mr. W. H., their only begetter". Is that Henry Wriothesley, Southampton?
OXFORD I wrote sonnets, not dedications.
HOST But many of your sonnets are addressed to him.
OXFORD I don’t believe I ever mentioned his name in my sonnets.
HOST You offered him your daughter Elizabeth in marriage and refused to marry her.
OXFORD Very disappointing to my daughter and me.
HOST But is he the young man of your sonnets?
OXFORD Perhaps a young man of his mold and breeding.
HOST Well, now about your sonnets to that young man. The first 17 sonnets encourage, sometimes chide, him to marry. Here are several representative verses from those sonnets:
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose may never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory;
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye
That thou consumest thyself in single life?
Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife;
Make thee another self, for love of me,
That beauty may still live in thine or thee.
But were some child of yours alive that time,
Should live twice, in it and in my rhyme.
Thee and thou refer to Southampton, do they not?
OXFORD True. Unfortunately, my verses didn't persuade him to marry my Elizabeth.
HOST Beginning with sonnet 18, there's a dramatic change in attitude from fatherly interest to affection and intimacy:
OXFORD
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often in his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance of nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long this lives, and this gives life to thee.
HOST The last verse hints you're aware that your genius will memorialize him. In sonnet 20, you use homoerotic language to allude to him as a lovely androgynous youth:
(OFFSTAGE
A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women's fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs,less false in rolling
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all "hues" in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.
HOST Those are not the words of a father or freeman but one lover committed to another.
OXFORD Those words sound familiar. (rises, goes over to Host and asks) May I? (silently scans book). I'm trying to recall. Familiar, yes, but not exactly my words (returns to his seat).
HOST Because today's sonnets are the censored version of your originals, unfortunately lost after Tom Thorpe's publication in 1609.
OXFORD I'm quite familiar with censorship.
HOST The sonnet hints of sexual love for the fair youth. Didn't your expression of love contradict the moral obligations to your wife?
OXFORD Why are you making love moral? Love is a motley to behold, appearing in many varieties.
HOST Did you ever act out that love?
OXFORD Only as participant in classical mythology.
HOST Was your love deeper than affection? What about the rumor you and your young man were lovers?
OXFORD Careful, lest you impawn yourself to my custody until such time as you are thoroughly schooled in manners. Have you no sense of decorum?
HOST While you were in Italy, you had as your traveling companion the Italian boy singer, an androgynous youth who reminds me of your cheruby Adonis.
OXFORD In all classical literature androgynous youths have similar looks and body language.
HOST Do you think the bisexual desires of a married man interfere with his marriage?
OXFORD You're being provocative again but I don't see how it could be otherwise. In fact, I wrote some verses on the matter:
I am not as I seem to be,
Nor when I smile I am not glad;
A thrall, although you count me free,
I most in mirth, most pensive sad.
HOST You had been disgraced by the Vavasor affair, by your alleged sexual exploits, and prodigality. In sonnet 29, you demean yourself and then proclaim love for your androgynous Adonis in a somewhat Jobean mood or perhaps reminiscent of Psalm 7.
OXFORD
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art or that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
HOST Were you prepared to give it all up for love of your Adonis?
OXFORD I was enthralled by the trinity of sexuality. That is, heterosexual and homosexual which embrace betwixt them bisexual, their pseudos.
HOST I must ask you, do you have a sexual preference?
OXFORD What? You’re exercising bad manners again. .Are you trying to provoke me to draw my sword?
HOST No, no, merely a rhetorical question, perhaps unwise on my part, my apology.
OXFORD Accepted. Your phrase sexual preference is a misnomer, surely an invalid phrase except for bisexuals. Heterosexuals require the opposite sex, homosexuals the same sex. Only bisexuals have preferences for the opposite or same sex. Consider this, one may be neither Protestant nor Catholic, perhaps one is both, neither fish nor mammal but amphibian. Sometimes love is like charity, given freely without preference. Sometimes it’s unexpected and accepted as one’s good fortune.
HOST Well, more of your sonnets. They appear to expose your true feelings?
OXFORD Express or expose? My sonnets are my enduring emotions serialized in verse. If one cannot contain his fantasies, should he sublimate or embrace them? If I deny my true emotions, who am I? For common acceptance, should my androgynous youth be transsexed to young woman? I was thinking of pagan and sexually tolerant Greece and Rome.
HOST Your self portrait is one of contradictions: defender of Protestantism but Catholic sympathizer, English nobleman but Italian courtier and enthusiast for things Italian, profligate to actors and writers but stingy to wife and family, lover of women and probably of
OXFORD We are many things over many years, all comporting with our immutable background and self awareness of who and what we are. Sometimes love is like charity, is freely given or received without preference.
HOST Sonnet 37 alludes to a father in decline. Here are the first 4 verses:
As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth;
You were 23 years older than Southampton and could easily be his decrepit father. It’s nonsense to think that Shaxpere, who was only 9 years older, could be considered Southampton’s decrepit father. You mentioned lameness.
OXFORD My social lameness, disgrace, loss of my good name. Also, the loss of most of my inherritance.
HOST In several sonnets, 55 and 81, you proclaim your verses will immortalize your Adonis. Here are the first 4 verses of sonnet 55:
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of Princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time,
and from sonnet 81:
Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,
You still shall live-such virtue hath my pen-
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.
Speaking of virtue, I'm reminded of Munday’s portrayal of you as Zelauto's Dainty Knight, whose Muse advises him to rely on virtue in order to advance his fame.
OXFORD Quite so.
HOST You were quite aware of your poetic genius, again promising immortality to the young man.
OXFORD I was aware of what I was writing contrasted with what others were writing.
HOST In several sonnets you admit you're hopelessly in love with your Adonis. In sonnets 57 and 58 you admit you're his slave and vassal. Here are the first 4 verses from each sonnet.
From sonnet 57:
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
and from sonnet 58:
That god forbid that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!
You not only thought those confessional verses but actually wrote them.
OXFORD Avowing my love and servitude to love freed me of its obsession. It was my last will and testament of the matter.
HOST Did you ever consider being a slave or vassal to a woman?
OXFORD I was, recall Anne Vavasor?
HOST You would have had another sexual scandal on your hands if your sonnets were published or even discovered.
OXFORD The which I hid them from my wife, my Countess Elizabeth.
HOST In several sonnets, 72 and 76, you wrote of concealing your name and even shame over your love for your Adonis. In sonnet 72 you wrote:
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
In sonnet 76, you suggest your genius will identify you:
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
You not only concealed your name but also the name of your Adonis.
OXFORD Obviously, for his sake and mine. An older man, I was already in retreat. He was young, identifying him would have ruined his future prospects.
HOST In sonnet 108 you avow love in the brain for your beloved Adonis. Here are the first 8 verses:
What's in the brain, that ink may character,
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit?
What's new to speak, what new to register,
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?
Nothing, sweet boy; but yet, like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same;
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.
It appears you were obsessed with your Adonis, lovesick in the brain.
OXFORD Isn’t that where all love is, in the brain?
HOST Meaning your love was real, more than a fantasy, more than words on paper.
OXFORD My love was there in my brain tenaciously reminding me of its existence and I had to deal with it. When not physically satisfied, love in the brain is intensified. Writing about it expresses its unrequited yearning. Writing is a solitary endeavor; sometimes the mind wanders but if it's in the brain it's real.
HOST But what about your countess?
OXFORD She knew nothing of it.
HOST I mean your physical relationship.
OXFORD Satisfactory, she never complained.
HOST Did your countess know what you were writing?
OXFORD She never questioned me about my writing. She never read any of them.
HOST Sonnet 110 begins:
Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there
And made myself a motley to the view,
As I recall, you did just that during the queen's Progress to Plymouth.
OXFORD Yes, then and at other times I'm afraid.
HOST In sonnet 121 you seem to be saying that what counts is not what you are but what others think of you, especially of your sportive blood. For example:
'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be receives reproach of being;
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed
Not by our feeling, but by other's seeing:
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
You risked your social status by admitting your sportive blood.
OXFORD I versed my private thoughts in sonnets and kept them secreted in my desk.
HOST Well, you finally got out of the closet.
OXFORD Out of the closet?
HOST Confronting and admitting your love for your Adonis.
OXFORD Well, I'm not Achilles or Alexander with their male whores or Caesar husband to wife and wife to husband. Some may gossip about my alleged abuses but they have their own. Have you ever considered others may be bevelled in different slants and directions? I am that I am, and serve her majesty only.
HOST That confirmation first expressed, I believe, to Burghley in one of your letters.
OXFORD Quite so.
HOST Growing older, you say farewell to your lovely boy, your Adonis. The first 4 verses of sonnet 126 express your sentiment:
O thou, my lovely boy, who, in thy power
Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle hour;
Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st
Thy lovers withering as they sweet self grow'st;
In sonnets 135 and 136 you use two rhetorical figures, the will of mind and the name Will. From sonnet 135 I’ve selected the following verses:
Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy 'Will',
And "Will" to boot, and 'Will' in overplus;
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
So thou being rich in 'Will', add to thy 'Will'
One will of mine, to make thy large 'Will' more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will'.
Those verses are very confusing.
OXFORD Not so, merely separate will of mind from Will the name. Keep in mind that, in my time, word play and puns were standard conventions.
HOST And from sonnet 136, I've selected the following:
"Will' will fulfill the treasure of thy love,
Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one.
Make but my name thy love, and love that still,
And then thou lovest me, for my name is 'Will'.
Those are not only very confusing but in fact incomprehensible.
OXFORD No, not if you use the definitions I just gave you. Separate abstract will from the name Will.
HOST Sonnet 141 reads like the repository of all of your enigmatic verses of love.
OXFORD What’s the first line?
HOST In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,
OXFORD
In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote;
Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted;
Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to ne invited
To any sensual feast with thee alone:
But my five wits nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
Who leaves unsway'd the likeness of a man,
Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be:
Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
That she that makes me sin awards me pain.
HOST That last verse surely alludes to Anne Vavasor.
OXFORD To the mistress who expectantly waits for the outburst of my two horns, those of Astolf and the man.
HOST Now in sonnet 144, you consider bisexuality. I believe you give preference to love of man:
(OFFSTAGE
Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each a friend,
I guess one angel is another's hell:
Yet this I shall ne'er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.)
OXFORD My Anne’s had gotten me into trouble.
HOST Your last two sonnets, 153 and 154, continue the bisexual theme.
OXFORD Sometimes love is beneficent given without guile. It comes upon one like a ghost, without choice.
HOST Those ending sonnets suggest your sexual trinity: hetero, homo, and bi.
OXFORD One must live in the social relativity of one's culture and current mores.
HOST Considering all your sonnets, they pattern a bell curve.
OXFORD Bell curve?
HOST The shape of a bell. (gesturing with hand) Your sonnets begin with fatherly concern for a youth, to love of him and passionate feelings filling the dome, to the dark eyed mistress and bisexuality of your exiting sonnets.
HOST The next year, 1594, was a great year for the theater, a fanfare of plays were produced by Henslowe including King Lear and Hamlet.
OXFORD With the queen's permission, I took over Lord Strange's acting company, which included Burbage and Kempe. I renamed the takeover the Lord Chamberlain's Men. From that time on, I wrote for and managed them.
HOST Performing only for the queen?
OXFORD No, no. Recall that Rome had its public entertainments, the Circus Maximus and Colosseum. England had its plays publicly performed in the streets, inns, taverns, and theaters. The queen, of course, had plays performed wherever and whenever she chose.
HOST But as usual your plays were produced or published anonymously.
OXFORD For obvious reasons already stated.
HOST Many of those plays, whether comedy, history, or tragedy, alluded to court intrigues and state matters.
OXFORD Subjects most sensitive to our queen. Her edict to playwrights was directed at me:
(OFFSTAGE (queen's voice) "Playwrights are admonished not to meddle in matters that should not be acted in theaters. If their words sound familiar, even though their biting satires and revenge motifs are rescued by embellishments of their sweet tongues, I will not tolerate any repetition or facsimile of conversations heard in this court. If any of their intentions betray the state, and censors bring to my attention any charge against them, I shall have to deal with it as a matter of state. I therefore admonish playwrights to desist from their reckless dancing on the blade's edge. In matters of state, I shall not dilute my prerogatives for consideration of their leniency or protection".)
HOST In May 1594 you published your second narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece, with an even more intimate dedication to Southampton:
The love I dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet without beginning is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have for your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of its acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part of all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordship to whom I wish long life still lengthened with all happiness.
If the first line is eliminated, the remainder sounds like Shaxpere giving thanks to a patron.
OXFORD But the first line justifies all the following lines.
HOST Any idea why Nashe, Markham, and Florio also wrote effusive and intimate dedications to Southampton?
OXFORD Southampton was a generous patron of the arts, especially writers.
HOST Including Shaxpere?
OXFORD I don’t know. I don't think so. He never mentioned Shaxpere to me. No one I knew ever mentioned the name Shaxpere, never mentioned that he was a writer.of any kind.
HOST In your poem King Tarquin lusts after Lucrece, the most virtuous wife of all his army generals. Determined to have her Tarquin swears:
As from the cold flint I enforced fire
So Lucrece must I force to my desire.
OXFORD She rejects him so he rapes her. After Lucrece reveals the rape to her male relatives, she commits suicide. Her male relatives revenge themselves on King Tarquin. They depose him and force him into exile. The rape of Troy eventually founded Rome. The rape of Lucrece founded the Roman Republic.
HOST Your two narrative poems, Venus and Lucrece, have rape in common.
OXFORD Rape is themed in Livy, Ovid, and Homer among others.
HOST It is also a recurrent theme in your plays such as A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Hamlet, The Tempest, and The Winter's Tale.
HOST Quite so, but rape gets the attention of an audience. Was rape your prod for sexual abuse, the kind you practiced against your wife?
OXFORD What? I never sexually abused or raped my wife.
HOST I meant mental abuse, mental rape.
OXFORD I never thought such a thing.
HOST On the title page of Lucrece, and for the first time in print, you subscribed your pseudonym William Shakespeare, this time no hyphen.
OXFORD For Southampton’s benefit, simply reaffirming my authorship.
HOST Then in September another narrative poem, Willobie His Avisa, was published anonymously. Was that yours?
OXFORD No, no.
HOST An introductory passage contains the reference to the figure W. S.: who not long before had tried the courtesy of the passion, and was now newly recovered of the like infection. If W. S. is William Shakespeare, your pseudonym, would this be a reference to your affair with the queen or Anne Vavasor?
OXFORD If it is, it's an old reference.
HOST The narrative describes W. S. an intimate of Avisa, the queen.
OXFORD True.
HOST And H. W. is proabaly Henry Wriothesley, Southampton?
OXFORD Most likely.
HOST Now H. W. is befriended by the old player W. S., who was once the queen's suitor. If the old player is you, all allusions become realities. You were 23 years older than H. W., his friend, and once the queen's lover.
OXFORD Wherein speculation becomes a theory of probability.
HOST The narrative goes on to describe the seducer of the would-be lady Avisa, the queen, alluding to:
Yet Tarquin plucks his glistering grape
And Shake-speare paints poor Lucrece rape
In the second verse Shake-speare is hyphenated, alluding to your pseudonym.
OXFORD Hyphenated or not, the open secret was that my collaborating writers and the literary cognoscenti were aware of my pseudonym.
HOST The anonymous author and seducer of Avisa, the queen, was assumed to be the 21 year old H. W. or Southampton himself..
OXFORD I don't believe he was the author and cannot believe he was infatuated with the queen, 40 years his senior.
HOST Continuing the narrative, H. W. cannot endure his burning passion for Avisa and seeks the advice of his familiar friend W. S.:
But yonder comes my faithful friend
That like assaults hath often tried
On his advice I will depend
Where I shall win, or be denied
These verses infer you are the familiar friend. You were a nobleman, Southampton’s friend, close to the queen, and did try like assaults on the queen and Anne Vavasor.
OXFORD Writings by anonymous authors are always open to wild speculation.
HOST Contrary to all this, there are those who believe that W. S. alludes to the Stratford man William Shaxpere.
(OFFSTAGE Are we to believe that the commoner Shaxpere was advising the Tudor lord Southampton on the devious and courtly sophistication for seducing the queen? Shaxpere was neither a nobleman, courtier, never intimate with and certainly never a lover of the queen. How could he have tried like assaults on ladies of the court or the queen?)
HOST Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lucrece established you in poetry's immortal book. Also, Richard Barnfield published A Remembrance of Some English Poets, predicting immortality for Shakespeare's poems. He writes:
And Shakespeare, thou whose honey-flowing vein,
Pleasing the world, thy praises doth obtain,
Whose Venus and whose Lucrece, sweet and chaste,
Thy name in fame's immortal book have plac'd;
Live ever you! - at least in fame live ever;
Well may the body die, but fame dies never.
OXFORD Note that the couplet ending with the words ever and never is a pun on the Vere name, reflecting the fact I was poet before playwright. I wrote many shorter poems such as:
The lively lark stretch'd forth her wing,
The messenger of Morning bright;
And with her cheerful voice did sing,
The Day's approach, discharging Night;
When that Aurora blushing red,
Descried the guilt of Thetis' bed.
... and so on.
HOST In January 1595 your oldest daughter Elizabeth married the very rich William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby. Is it true you wrote A Midsummer-Night's Dream to celebrate their wedding?
OXFORD I happen to have completed it at that time. Their marriage was celebrated in Greenwich, attended by the queen and her retinue, followed by a performance of Midsummer.
HOST You and Derby became close friends.
OXFORD We had similar interests. He was a poet and playwright, a patron of the theater, and had his own acting company. He also concealed his name, not subscribing it to his writings. They lived in retreat in Cannon Row, away from court and the public. We became close friends and visited frequently.
HOST In fact George Fenner wrote a letter claiming that: The earl of Derby is busied only in penning comedies for the common players.
OXFORD Much to my daughter's chagrin, reminding her that her father spent more time and money on the theater than on his family. My daughter's views were well known. She didn't want her husband spending, that is exhausting, his patrimony on the theater as her father had done.
HOST In fact your daughter, now the Contess Elizabeth, was heard to remark that "My father had spent his patrimony on the theater" and she hoped her husband would not do the same. But there you have it, they married in spite of her misgivings.
OXFORD I was happy to have a son-in-law whose interest in the theater was similar to mine. On occasion I offered him access to my manuscripts.
HOST Did you two collaborate?
OXFORD We collaborated on plays for public rehearsal. Once, he related to me a French tale, which I interwove with Cinthio's Epitia, for the plot of Measure for Measure. In that play, Claudio is imprisoned for making pregnant his lover Juliet.
HOST Sounds like your affair with Anne Vavasor and resultant imprisonment by the queen. Claudio's virgin sister Isabella pleads for his release, as did your first wife Anne and her father trying to get the queen to release you from the Tower.
OXFORD Angelo proposes to release Isabella's brother if she sleeps with him. She agrees but then comes the bed trick again. Substituting for Isabella is Angelo's betrothed Mariana and they consummate their love.
HOST This was the year you turned 45 and your wife, the Countess Elizabeth, bought King's Place in Hackney, only a few miles from Stratford. It was reported she desired the move to dispel the salacious rumors and turmoil over your alleged intimate relationship with Southampton, your young man.
OXFORD Rumors and lies followed me like gadflies. However, the move to King's Place proved beneficial, keeping me in retreat, away from court. Aloof from literary and public events, it afforded me full time for writing and revising.
HOST Let's talk about the controversial play the Tempest.
OXFORD Another controversy, really?
HOST Stratfordians claim the play was based on Sir George Somers shipwreck on the Bermudas in 1609, written after your death.
OXFORD Nonsense! I wrote it while living at King's Place. Recall that I contributed my ship Edward Bonaventure to Henry May's sailing expedition. Unfortunately, he returned without the expected riches, plunging me further in debt. But he related to me his shipwreck on the Bermudas. I integrated his story in the Tempest, getting therefore something of value from my failed investment.
HOST In the play Prospero, Duke of Milan, and his infant daughter Miranda were set adrift in a boat.
OXFORD Milan is in Italy and the island they drifted onto is in the Mediterranean not the Atlantic. How could they possibly drift from Italy to the Bermoothes when the prevailing Atlantic current flows in the opposite direction. It's the same Caribbean current Columbus, Drake, and Raleigh plied returning to Europe.
HOST In the play Prospero cares more for reading and learning than in managing his dukedom, which is usurped by his brother and others.
OXFORD Set adrift, Prospero and Miranda encounter an island inhabited by spirits. Later his usurpers are blown upon that isle by a tempest. The play evolves from their relationships of fear, hate, and love supervised by spirits. Stephano, a common drunkard, wants to become king of the island. A commoner wanting to become a nobleman.
HOST An allusion to Shaxpere wanting to become Shakespeare.
OXFORD In the end, they all leave the island and return to normal life in Milan. In the end, Prospero regains his dukedom and forgives his usurpers.
HOST By the way, why do your historic plays go back to King John? It's said your version was based on the older play The Troublesome Raigne of John King of England.
OXFORD I wrote my version of King John because of my ancestor the 2nd Earl of Oxford. When the king lost parts of France the 2nd earl remained loyal to him. Thereafter, the 2nd Earl commanded the king's forces in Ireland quelling the rebellion there. But the 3rd earl joined those who forced King John to accept the human rights proclamation, the Magna Carta. The play was performed in public before it was published to refine its production.
HOST Meantime, Southampton was getting himself into trouble with the queen. He got Elizabeth Vernon pregnant, one of the queen's maids-of-honor, then fled to Paris. Summoned by the queen, he returned, married the pregnant Vernon, and departed again for Paris. Summoned again by the queen, she imprisoned him for his insolence. That sounds like a repeat of your Vavasor affair.
OXFORD At 25 Southampton's career as a courtier was over. For sympathy he turned to Essex, enlisting to fight with him in the queen's expedition to eliminate the threat of Spanish ships mustering again in Cadiz. Her expeditionary force destroyed 52 ships and captured the seaport of Cadiz.
HOST On his return from the victory at Cadiz, Essex got into trouble with the queen. He asked her for an important post.
OXFORD For unknown reasons the queen did not reward him for his part in the victory. She denied him his requested post, even forbidding him to publish his experiences in the victory. The disappointed Essex argued with the queen. Angered she castigated him with a torrent of caustic words. I know how that felt. Essex flew into a rage and to show contempt, turned his back on her. Reacting, she lashed out striking him. When he reached for his sword, courtiers gathered around the queen protecting her. Even in my most arrogant, impulsive, and irreverent moments I never committed that breach of code. The humbled Essex limped away from court with his wounded pride. Humiliated he retreated to his manor in Wansted, absenting himself from court.
HOST It was well known the queen ignored the Essex family at Wansted. Any idea why?
OXFORD You may recall the queen refused to marry her proxy husband Leicester, who turned on her and secretly married Lettice Knolleys, Essex's widowed mother. The queen's antagonism derives from that snub and that marriage. Then Lettice sent the queen flattering letters and jewels as emollients. Her presumption enraged the queen, to think that she could be bought so cheaply. Failing in her attempt to win over the queen, Lettice proudly rode around London in her new Italian carriage. The queen had a similar carriage and was so outraged at Lettice's mocking exhibition, she ordered the entire Knolleys' family to keep to their manor in Wansted.
HOST Well, so that's the story. About that time, the 2nd Earl of Pembroke proposed a marriage between his son William Herbert 17 and your 13 year old daughter Bridget.
OXFORD Yes but Bridget, my second daughter, rejected him.
HOST From 1594-98 Titus Andronicus, Henry VI, Richard II, Richard III, and Romeo and Juliet were all published anonymously. Why?
OXFORD You already know my reasons for doing so.
HOST If Shaxpere were the popular playwright seeking fame and fortune in London, why would he conceal his name?
OXFORD Ay, it's a mystery.
HOST Why would the greedy businessman Shaxpere deliberately refuse payment for his most valuable products, his plays?
OXFORD A greater mystery.
HOST In 1598 John Marston published his Scourge of Villanie, alluding to you as follows:
Far fly thy fame
Most, most of me beloved, whose silent name
One letter bounds. Thy true judicial style
I ever honour, and if my love beguile
Not much my hopes, then thy unvalu'd worth
Shall mount fair place when Apes are turned forth.
Now Edward de Vere is a name bounded by the letter e and it’s silent because you wrote under the name of William Shakespeare. Marston foresees the time when the unvalued de Vere name shall achieve its high place and its fame fly far when apes are dismissed, when Shaxpere is dismissed.
OXFORD Keep in mind that my disvalued de Vere name protected me and my heirs from public exposure.
HOST For that and other reasons, some of the literati criticized you for concealing your name.
OXFORD My literary critics took pleasure in ridiculing me for cowardly concealing my name while I used my literary power to satirize and punish those in power. There was Edward Hake who rebuked me for concealing my name, using instead assumed names. Churchyard considered me most foul for concealing my name and meddling into state matters. Stephan Batman railed against me for using pagan Greek and Roman mythology.
HOST In fact in September 1598, Francis Meres published Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury, in which Oxford is ranked among the best playwrights for comedy. Furthermore, for the first time in public print Shakespeare is referenced and eulogized as a playwright best for comedy and tragedy. Yet, he doesn't cite a single play bearing the name Shakespeare. Was Meres not aware that Oxford and Shakespeare were the same person?
OXFORD He appreciated the constraints of the noblemen's unwritten code by placing Oxford at court and the pseudonymous Shakespeare in public.
HOST Meres likens you to the great Latin authors and extols you as author of immortal poetry. He wrote:
(OFFSTAGE ... the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus, Lucrece, and his sugared sonnets to his private friends ... As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage ... the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase, if they would speak English ... the most passionate among us to bewail and bemoan the perplexities of love).
HOST Your private friends would certainly include the young man and woman of your sonnets.
OXFORD Obviously.
HOST Because of the similarity of names, Shaxpere probably became author of your anonymous plays.
OXFORD At least I shall have protected my heirs from the double stigma of authorship and impoverishment. I have no doubt that my writings will be attributed to another. Meantime, smoldering for recognition, I cry out and foretell the time when "my name be buried where my body is".
HOST But wouldn't the public, because of the tremendous popularity of your plays, demand to know and see Shakespeare?
OXFORD Why? The public was interested in plays, not in playwrights. Using my name would have meant probable retaliation against me by prominent nobles. The literary cognoscenti knew that Shakespeare was one of my pseudonyms. Besides, plays by anonymous authors were easily pirated. Any play pirate or broker could claim to be Shakespeare.
HOST What about the putative ruse perpetrated by Southampton who claimed:
(OFFSTAGE , Southampton’s voice I encountered the Stratford man, William Shaxpere, several times. He was a servitor, a sycophant ingratiating himself to playgoers. An opportunist, he became a briber of actors for their memorial reconstruction. Because of the similarity of names, he passed himself off as Shakespeare. Of course, he had no way of knowing I knew the true author. I asked him why, if he was the popular playwright Shakespeare, his name had never appeared in print. In his Stratford dialect, he stammered an irrelevant answer. No learned person would ever believe him an author of anything. If he were to libel a nobleman, he would be excused for the purely imaginary expeditions of his untutored mind stumbling in fields of his new found literacy. Shaxpere, a pirater of plays, persisted in peddling bad quartos and soon became a theater gadfly to be rid of lest some irate playwright run him through with his rapier. So like a cuckoo, I laid my ruse in Shaxpere's nest. To get rid of him, I offered him £1,000 to go back to Stratford, which he willingly did buying the second biggest house there).
HOST There are those who claim Southampton gave Shaxpere £1,000 to be rid of him. What do you make of that?
OXFORD £1,000 to a commoner! the yearly stipend the queen granted me for my entertainments? I don't think so. If he gave Shaxpere that huge amount, I and the entire court would have known about it. Besides, I wasn't aware of any connection between Southampton and your Shaxpere.
HOST But if there were, Southampton would have found a live substitute for the mysterious William Shakespeare.
OXFORD Why? To what end?
HOST To protect you.
OXFORD From what? The public wants to see plays, not playwrights.
HOST It might have been better if Southampton had Shaxpere remain in London so everyone could take his measure of the man and see that he couldn't possibly be a playwright. In Stratford Shaxpere was a peddler of sacked goods, grains and the like.
OXFORD While he's full of oats, I starve like the proverbial horse. Look, I do the writer's work. If Shaxpere learned to write, it was probably with a porcupine quill.
HOST Isn't it possible Shaxpere could have collaborated with playwrights and sold plays under the name Shakespeare?
OXFORD Could be, maybe, perhaps, perchance, possibly.
HOST But all your extraordinary works would be forever attributed to another, to the pretender Shaxpere? Didn't that depress you? your dual needs for anonymity and recognition pulling you in opposite directions?
OXFORD Depressed no. Concerned yes. But the truth will out. Here are some of my relevant verses regarding anonymity and fame:
The idle drone that labors not at all
Sucks up the sweet of honey from the bee
The drone more honey sucks, that laboreth not at all,
Than doth the bee, to whose most pain least pleasure doth befall:
also:
The gard'ner sows the seeds, whereof the flowers do grow,
And others yet do gather them, that took less pain I trow.
I'm hopeful that future cognoscenti will detect the many hints I've inserted in my poems and plays.
HOST As you did in The Taming of the Shrew? The opening two scenes, the Induction, have nothing to do with the play. They satirize a beggar whose made to think he's a lord. An allusion to Shaxpere pretending he's Shakespeare.
OXFORD In Henry IV, there are several allusions to Shaxpere pretending to be Shakespeare. Davy asks Justice Shallow if he intends to stop any of William's wages about the sack he lost the other day at Hinkley Fair near Stratford. There's also another incident in which Davy remarks to Justice Shallow, "I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor of Woncot. To which Shallow replies, "There is many complaints, Davy, against that Visor. That Visor is an errant knave, on my knowledge".
HOST The lost sack obviously refers to Shaxpere as a peddler of sacked goods. The Shallow reply must allude to Shaxpere as a visor, a mask for the real Shakespeare, mask for you.
OXFORD Only if he was the rustic pirating my plays and subscribing his name to them.
HOST Speaking of rustics, let's talk about As You Like It.
OXFORD In that play, I portray myself as the ex-courtier Touchstone and William as a rustic. When William appears, Touchstone concludes he's a quick wit but not learned.
HOST Yes, but then comes that incomprehensible metaphor about pouring drink from a cup into a glass. Touchstone remarks (reads): "drink being poured out of a cup into a glass, fills the glass while emptying the cup; for all you writers do consent that ipse is he. Now, you are not ipse, for I am he". What's that all about?
OXFORD As someone else gets credit for my poems and plays I am emptied of them. Recall that when Burghley sent his man Stainner to spy on me, I wrote a letter rebuking Burghley, avowing that I am that I am and serve her majesty only. "Ipse dixit", he himself has said it.
HOST Through Touchstone you say you are Shakespeare and the rustic William is Shaxpere.
OXFORD You could infer that.
HOST About self portrayals, in the play Love's Labor's Lost you are Berowne who makes speeches like:
Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-pil'd hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical; these summer flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation
Were you parodying the popular Euphuistic style?
OXFORD Isn't it obvious?
HOST The play was newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespeare. You subscribed your pseudonym to the play.
OXFORD I might have. I don't remember. Even so, there were those who criticized me. Edward Hake called me a stinking badger and worthless nobleman, for writing under many concealed names. Thomas Bastard, godson of the queen, wrote a poem rebuking me for concealing my name. He claimed I was made of vinegar, gall, and wormwood, a flatterer who should cease to write.
HOST That year 1598 proved to be the greatest loss to the queens' court. The queen's chief minister and its most prominent courtier died, Lord Burghley, your father-in-law.
OXFORD A shattering loss for the queen. He served her since She was a princess at Hatfield House, longer than any other minister, more than 40 years. During his tenure England preserved its Protestant queen and defeated Spain to became a European power. He bequeathed to his son Robert Cecil and his granddaughters, my daughters, enormous estates of money, plate, jewelry, and almost 300 properties with high yearly incomes. His vaulting ambition made him one of the richest men in England. We had our differences - artistic, familial, financial. But there was an exception to the Oxford-Burghley antilogy, we were her longest serving courtiers.
HOST After Burghley died, you sought his son Robert's help in obtaining a grant of Waltham Forest.
OXFORD The queen denied me. Subsequently, I petitioned her for the reversion of Havering House, which had been in my family for generations. Again she denied me.
HOST Later in the year John Farmer, an organist, published his Set of English Madrigals dedicated to you, acclaiming you as one "who in music has overgone most professionals".
OXFORD Referring to my good use of sol-fa syllables in composing music. I was pleased at his dedication and copy of his madrigals.
HOST It was also the year the queen coaxed Essex out of retirement.
OXFORD What's incredible is that later, the queen made Essex Governor General of Ireland providing him with an army to put down the rebellious Earl of Tyrone. Despite all the enmity between them and the vast abyss of their ages, she still lusted after him. Meantime, the prelacy burned satires and other offensive books. It forbid Nashe and Harvey to publish even though they were literary enemies.
HOST About that time Much Ado About Nothing appeared.
OXFORD Sourced from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. A play in which all the couples are in love but none marries. Onan spilling his seed. Incidentally, on the subject of love and marriage, my youngest daughter Bridget married Francis Norris the future Baron of Rycote.
HOST Now in 1600 you were 50 and, in order to improve your financial position, you wrote a letter to your brother-in-law Robert Cecil. In it you seek his help in obtaining the governorship of the Isle of Jersey, even though the queen had repeatedly denied your like petitions. You wrote:
Although my bad success in former suits to her Majesty have given me cause to bury my hopes in the deep abyss and bottom of despair, rather than now to attempt, after so many trials made in vain and so many opportunities escaped, the effect of fair words and golden promises; yet for that I cannot believe but there hath always been a true correspondence of word and intention in her Majesty, so I do conjecture that with a little help that which of itself hath brought forth so fair blossoms will also yield fruit... If she shall not deign me this in an opportunity of time so fitting, what time shall I attend which is uncertain to all men unless in the graves of men there were a time to receive benefits and good turns from princes.
OXFORD The queen denied me again, giving the governorship to my friend Sir Walter Raleigh. With both his father and sister dead, Robert Cecil had little motive for the preferment of his brother-in-law. Like queen, like father, like son.
HOST But you got some good news when you heard that Edward Vere, your son by Anne Vavasor, made captain.
OXFORD A fine young man.
HOST Later, you again asked for Robert Cecil's help, this time in obtaining the Presidency of Wales.
OXFORD Yes, but such help was not forthcoming. The queen denied me again.
HOST The queen having denied your petitions, you returned to writing and revising. Some say you completed As You Like It and that it was sourced from Marlowe's Hero and Leander.
OXFORD We borrowed from each other.
HOST What about the Cambridge's students Parnassus plays?
OXFORD Students asked for my help, gladly given to my alma mater.
HOST In Return from Parnassus, the speech by the clown Kempe was clearly written to show that Shakespeare was a university man and only an ignoramus could believe that "Shakespeare was a fellow of a stage-clown and without college education or classical references in writings".
OXFORD Those students showing their collective contempt for the unschooled Shaxpere. Such a one would certainly not be returning from Parnassus.
HOST Meantime, Essex was getting into trouble again.
OXFORD In Ireland Essex had squandered the queen's finances and lost control of her army. Then against the queen's orders, he negotiated a truce with the Earl of Tyrone. One never countermands the queen. Consequently, she recalled Essex and referred him to Robert Cecil and her Council. For his insubordination, they stripped him of his position, sinecures, and trading monopolies. Outraged, the impulsive Essex resolved to arouse the public on his behalf. He surprised the queen and her court by trying to put on trial Robert Cecil and all those who stripped him of his honor and good name. He even accused Sir Walter Raleigh of plotting to murder him for disobeying the queen's orders.
HOST Southampton supported Essex's cause. You were their friend but didn't join them.
OXFORD I believed in the hierarchy of the monarchy. I refused to get involved in rebellion. After all, several of my cousins were beheaded simply on the basis of allegations. Enamored of the theater, Southampton and Essex planned to perform in the streets my old play Richard II, hoping that showing in public the deposition of an evil king might sway them to their cause. You should know that my original deposition scene of Richard II was so inflammatory, censors deleted it from printed copies.
HOST Yet no action was taken against you its author. I can't imagine anyone else getting away with writing such a play.
OXFORD Essex and Southampton never performed the play. Instead, they acted it out. They led 300 swordsmen through London streets. Essex shouted that his enemies were deliberately plotting to ruin him. The public wasn't moved by his show of force because the queen's men immediately overpowered them. Essex and Southampton fled retreating to Essex House, where they and their supporters were arrested and charged with rebellion.
HOST In 1601 the queen again named you, first in rank among your peers, to sit on the tribunal trying Essex, Southampton, and others for rebellion. The tribunal found them guilty of treason. They were condemned them to death and imprisoned in the Tower.
OXFORD I begged the queen to commute their sentences. Pleading with the queen to show mercy for the condemned drained me of any reserve strength. It was the third time I had done so. For my uncle the Duke of Norfolk, for Mary Queen of Scots, then for Essex and Southampton. Fortunately for Southampton, she relented and he escaped the executioner's broadaxe when she commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. Also, my health was failing preventing me from attending the House of Lords. She signed some of the death warrants but not the one for Essex. She vacillated, signing it and then tearing it up. After vacillating for months, she signed it. The queen and I were playing duets on the virginal when she was informed that Essex and others had been beheaded. She made her parlando reply and continued playing.
HOST By the way, why were Essex and others beheaded not hanged?
OXFORD Commoners are hanged. Royalty and nobility are beheaded with the cold steel of battle where they fight and die for their monarch, titles, lands, and preferments.
HOST Sir Charles Danvers was one of those beheaded.
OXFORD Yes, and the queen was informed that his large estate would revert to escheat. Later, she expressed an interest in granting me the Danvers escheat. I asked Robert Cecil for help in expediting the transaction, but such help was not forthcoming. I never got the Danvers escheat. It seemed there would be no end to feuding with the queen and the Cecil's. Entre nous, the queen appeared determined to deny all my petitions: the Forest of Essex, Waltham Forest, the Keepership of Havering House, trading monopolies, the governorship of the Isle of Jersey, Presidency of Wales, the escheat of the Charles Danvers estate, probably others I can't recall.
HOST On a lighter note, the queen was delighted with your character Falstaff. Is it true she wanted you to write a play about Falstaff in love?
OXFORD Her mention, of course, requires it be done. I based the Falstaff play on Strapardo's Le Tredici Piacevoli Notte, The Thirteen Merry Nights, which became The Merry Wives of Windsor.
HOST Your only play of English middle class life. In the play, you have 3 suitors for Anne Page's hand.
OXFORD Quite so. She is sought in marriage by Slender, Dr. Caius, and Fenton. I caricature Philip Sydney as Slender and Edward Manners, Earl of Rutland as Dr. Caius both of whom proposed marriage with Anne Cecil and were rejected by Burghley. Anne Page, of course, is Anne Cecil.
HOST Which leaves you as Fenton, the third suitor.
OXFORD Fenton performs a mask in which he and Anne Page slip away to marry. Fenton also represents Geoffrey Fenton who dedicated his book, Golden Epistles, to my deceased wife the former Anne Cecil.
HOST In spite of your disappointments and ill health, you managed to complete Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
OXFORD Writing was the sine qua non of my retreat from the queen, Cecil, court, trials, and executions.
HOST The next year 1602 the queen permitted you to combine your actors with Worcester's, consolidating them into one company.
OXFORD Part of her £1,000 annual subsidy would pay for the new company. I insisted we play at the Boar's Head Theater (holds out the boar emblem hanging from ribbon around his neck).
HOST This was the year Hamlet and Merry Wives of Windsor were registered.
OXFORD And at that time I believe I was again revising the Tempest with Gosnold's account of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Then, as a tribute to Essex's memory, I began Coriolanus.
HOST The Consul Coriolanus was guilty of insufferable pride in the nobility of his family, denying anything about him was common and claiming that commoners were idiots.
OXFORD Coriolanus was sourced from Plutarch's Lives. Essex too was insufferably proud of his family's lineage, which got him into trouble with the queen. His exalted pride led to his execution.
HOST There are many accounts of the queen’s deep regret ordering the execution of Essex her former young lover.
OXFORD An act from which the queen never recovered. She couldn't cope with his execution. She was morose and constantly agitated and given to fits of weeping. With her bonny Robin gone, loyal Sussex gone, the stout Burghley gone, and having just beheaded her young impetuous lover, she was desperately lonely exiling herself in her bedchamber with all the drapes drawn. Because of my ill health, I couldn't entertain her, perhaps lighten her self-imposed punishment. She remained lethargic, absent her normal verve.
HOST Would entertainment have done any good?
OXFORD Perhaps a brief reprieve from her guilt. The queen never recovered from her execution of Essex. Despondent, she became deeply depressed, a hypochondriac who spent her time in bed, the royal ward of her bedchamber's gentlewomen. At King's Place, only several miles from her palace, I received several reports daily of her deteriorating condition. I frequently called upon her. Her once smooth ivory skin was shriveled with deathly pallor, her bright eyes opaqued windows through which she couldn't focus, her once rapier wit unable to comprehend conversation. Unable to speak or verbalize she communicated by signs and gestures. Once, recognizing me, she covered her eyes moaning and crying out at the passing ghosts of Norfolk, Mary Queen of Scots, and Essex.
HOST She recognized you, addressed you?
OXFORD In a delirium, she called out their names. I never forgot that scene. In fact, I memorialized the queen's death throes in my portrayal of Lady Macbeth. Parliament worried over her deteriorating condition and her successor. Burghley was right after all; for years he had worried about her successor. She not only was barren but refused to share power with a husband.
HOST At Richmond Palace on 24March1603, on New Year's Eve, the queen died at age 70.
OXFORD La regina é morte.
HOST The queen is dead.
OXFORD In the funeral procession, I was one of six peers who bore the royal canopy over her bier.
Were't aught to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honoring,
and so on.
HOST Those verses from sonnet 125. What about the word extern?
OXFORD I was still Lord Great Chamberlain but not resident at court.
HOST Bearing the royal canopy couldn't possibly apply to Shaxpere. It's mind boggling to substitute him for a peer of the realm. You were not only the finest poet and playwright in England but survived the queen as her longest serving courtier.
OXFORD After her death there were those, such as Giles Fletcher, who rebuked me for my silence. They expected me to compose copious memorial verses to her memory, but if I couldn't praise her enough then I would be silent.
HOST You commented on her death in a letter to your brother-in-law Sir Robert Cecil (reads):
I cannot but find great grief in myself to remember the mistress which we have lost, under whom both you and myself from our greenest years have been in a manner brought up; and although it hath pleased God after an earthly kingdom to take her up into a more permanent and heavenly state, wherein I do not doubt but she is crowned with glory; There is nothing therefore left to my comfort but the excellent virtues and deep wisdom wherein God hath endured our new Master and Sovereign Lord, who doth not come amongst us as a stranger but as a natural Prince, succeeding by right of natural blood and inheritance, not as a conqueror but as the true Shepherd of Christ's flock to cherish and comfort them.
OXFORD The queen was succeeded by King James I of Scotland, son of Mary Queen of Scots whom she had beheaded. Destiny had marked him for the queen's successor. He restored me to the original duties of hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain. (stands drawing his sword) Bearing the sword of state, bedecked in robes of 40 yards of Italian crimson velvet Edward de Vere, 17the Earl of Oxford did officiate at the coronation of the new king, James I and his Queen Anne. The king, holding me in high esteem, I petitioned him for the release from the Tower of the Earl of Southampton. The king released Southampton, inspiring me to write the sonnet:
Not mine own fears nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming of things to come
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage,
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes:
And thou in this shall find thy monument,
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
(scabbards his sword and returns to his chair)
HOST I know that one, just a moment (turns pages of book). It's sonnet 107, in which your allude to the dead queen as the mortal moon.
OXFORD The new royal family exhibited a renewed interest in the theater. The king took over the sponsorship of my actors, calling them the King's Men. Queen Anne sponsored her own group of players, and their son Prince Henry sponsored the Admiral's Men. More important, the king confirming my birthright, granted me the inherited lands withheld from me and granted requests denied me by our late queen. Finally, I was restored to my inheritance. Lastly and completely, the king renewed my annuity of £1,000.
HOST In spite of your good recent fortune your literary critic Chettle, in his poem England's Mourning Garment, reproached you for your silence over not mourning the dead queen, for not eulogizing her with your verses.
OXFORD I had known the queen 43 years, sometimes intimately. I was determined not to write disparaging verses against the dead.
HOST The dead queen had given Shakespeare much commendable celebrity, enabling him to become the greatest playwright of her reign. If Shaxpere were Shakespeare, why didn't he write memorial verses?
OXFORD The answer is mysteriously imbedded in your question.
HOST That year 1603 Hamlet was published by William Shakes-speare, your hyphenated pseudonym. Troilus and Cressida was registered but not published, and The Tempest completed.
OXFORD That year began with sorrow over the queen's death but ended in joy over the restoration of my benefits and seeing my works in progress come to fruition.
HOST In 1604 you were 54 and the year began with good news.
OXFORD King James granted my petitions for custody of the Forest of Essex and the Keepership of Havering House, both grants previously rejected by our late queen. My ancestors possessed the same for generations. The king also reappointed me to the Royal Privy Council from which our late queen had suspended me.
HOST Because of your illness the King's Men, lacking your leadership and prestige, were getting into trouble with authorities.
OXFORD They asked for my help, gladly given, but I had to impress upon them the need for complying with censorship laws.
HOST In honor of the new queen Southampton, the theater lover, produced at court Love's Labors Lost.
OXFORD Continuing his keen involvement in the theater. The king was so enamored of Hamlet, he permitted my revised version to be published under his own Royal Coat of Arms.
HOST That would have been impossible for a commoner like Shaxpere. If he were the author, the king would have at least knighted him, Sir William Shaxpere.
OXFORD Men want recognition for their work. I had to do it pseudonymously through Shakespeare.
HOST Eventually you were struck down by the ubiquitous plague spreading like wild fire.
OXFORD I recuperated and felt better only to relapse from its recrudescence. I thought of the Latin aphorism "ars longa, vita brevis", art is long, life is short.
(Oxford walks off set)
HOST On 24Jun1604, at King's Place, Oxford died of the plague. In the play Hamlet, dying in Horatio's arms, Hamlet begs him to clear his name and tell his story. Here are Hamlet's poignant words:
(OFFSTAGE)
Horatio, I am dead;
Thou livest; report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.
"O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown,shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity for a while,
And in this harsh world, draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story.
The rest is silence.
HOST Oxford had Horatio utter these anguished words to reveal his own concern that posterity would not link him to his great poems and plays written under his pseudonym William Shakespeare. Perhaps his genius will be rescued by the implication of his family motto "Vero Nihil verius", nothing truer than truth.
But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.
Away! let's go learn the truth of it.
At age 54 the final curtain was drawn on the drama of Oxford's extraordinary life. His persona revealed he was of Tudor nobility, a maverick earl, irreverent courtier, lover of Queen Elizabeth I, adulterer, and probably bisexual. He was a soldier, sailor, sophisticated traveler, patron of actors, theater, and writers, and jousting champion. His volatile reputation plunged from court favorite and intimate of the queen to her outcast. In the panoply of his many intellectual accomplishments he was a classical scholar, linguist, lawyer, musician, poet, playwright, and producer. His poems and plays reveal an extraordinary range of knowledge. Oxford loved women, probably young men, and was true to his friends. In his first marriage his in-laws complained he was a poor husband and father; he was. There's no evidence of such complaints in his settled second marriage. His life was interleaved with the lives of royalty, noblemen, and prominent persons foreign and domestic. He was associated with actors, writers, and the theater for at least 40 years. The incontrovertible fact is that Oxford was the only playwright having intimate knowledge of the queen and her court, and was acknowledged by contemporaries to be the leading poet and playwright in England.
I'm neither an Oxford nor Shakespeare nor Shaxpere scholar. I refuse to devote 10 or 20 years to literary archaeology, digging for evidence supporting my belief that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford publicly disguised himself as the pseudonymous author William Shakespeare. Many others believe, as I do, that an aristocrat like Oxford was the true author. These Oxfordians include the following prominent persons: Sigmund Freud, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Tennyson, William Wordsworth, John Galsworthy, John Greenleaf Wittier, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, David McCullough, Charles Chaplain, Leslie Howard, Sir John Gielgud, Orson Wells, Vladimir Nobokov, and Kenneth Branagh.
The accumulation of overwhelming circumstantial evidence, including public records, favor of Oxford's authorship and that’s good enough for me. His poems reveal his personality, and plays his biography. Writing under the pseudonym Shakespeare he lived, died, and was buried anonymously. Imagine! the greatest writer in English, complying with codes of nobility and the arbitrary mores of his time, was forced to use pseudonyms and ruses to conceal his genius. He remains the glistening finial of the writer's staff and had prophesied that "the truth will out". After 400 years it’s time Stratfordians gave up their myth of the Stratford man who could barely write his name.
In conclusion my intuition, backed by the duck clichè, favors the odds that Oxford was Shakespeare. As for you, judge for yourselves whether you believe in phrenology or the slot machines or circumstantial evidence.. I created the conversation, now you decide.
Here are some posthumous events favoring Oxfordian claims:
King James I had such a great appreciation of Oxford that he embellished Oxford's scant military exploits to the point of national heroism. The king loved Shakespeare plays and was so remorsed at Oxford's death that, in memorial tribute, he ordered 7 Shakespeare plays to be performed at court. The Countess of Oxford died in 1612 and, in memorial tribute to the Oxford's, the king ordered 14 Shakespeare plays to be performed at court. In 1612 Shaxpere was alive but wasn't present at court when the plays were performed. If Shaxpere were the author of the plays don't you think the king would have requested him to be present at court? Instead, Shaxpere was living in comfortable oblivion in Stratford.
In March 1604, the name Shakespeare was included in a theater roster of actors, but in August the name was missing from that roster suggesting he was dead. Oxford died 24Jun1604 but Shaxpere was still living.
In 1605, Oxford's daughter Susan married Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery. He became a patron of the First Folio.
In 1607 Shaxpere was alive but William Barkstead's poem, Mirrha Mother of Adonis, alludes to Shakespeare in the past tense:
His Song was worthie merrit (Shakspeare hee)
Sung the fair blossome, thou the withered tree
Laurell is due him, his art and wit
Hath purchast it, Cypres thy brow will fit.
His Song was - past tense.
withered tree - dead.
Cypres thy brow will fit - cypres, wood for caskets.
In 1608 Oxford's widow sold King's Place. She moved out leaving Oxford's secreted sonnets behind. William Hall, a government agent searching the vacated King's Place found the hidden sonnets. He realized their literary significance and took them to Tom Thorpe, a sometime literary agent, who published them in 1609. The dedication of the sonnets refers "to our ever-living poet", a phrase applied to dead poets such as Oxford, and "to Mr. W. H., their only begetter". Is W. H. William Hall the discoverer of the sonnets or
Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton? Whoever wrote the dedication probably used W. H., William Hall, as a mask for Henry Wriothesley the young man of the sonnets. In this case W. H., the discoverer, could be interpreted as the begetter to maintain Oxford’s dubious reputation. In those days using masks, pseudonyms, or metaphors was a common practice.
In 1609 Troilus and Cressida, and Pericles, were published and their title pages subscribed with the same hyphenated Shakes-speare as Venus, Lucrece, and sonnets. The preface of Troilus is especially revealing:
Eternal reader you have here a new play, never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar ... And believe this, that when he is gone, and his comedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set up a new English Inquisition. Take this for a warning, and at the pleasure of your pleasure's loss, for not being sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude; but thank fortune for the scape it hath made amongst you. Since by the grand possessors' wills, I believe you should have prayed for them rather than been prayed.
Consider the following: (a) if Shaxpere were the author the phrases "never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar" and "sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude" ridicule his own class of commoners but would easily comply with the haughty attitude of a nobleman, (b) the author is gone (died) at a time when Shaxpere was alive, (c) the writer of that preface prophesied a New English Inquisition would be set up; that prophecy was and still is being fulfilled today because it's exactly what we're doing, inquiring into the authorship of Shakespeare's poems and plays, and (d) the play was held by grand possessors, implying earls probably got possession of Troilus and Cressida, Pericles, other plays such as Macbeth, Henry VIII, and The Two Noble Kinsmen.
In 1615 William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke became Lord Chamberlain in charge of the English theater. He was the brother of Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery who was married to Oxford's youngest daughter Susan. The two brothers partnered to manage the publication of the First Folio.
In 1622 Henry Peacham cited Elizabeth's reign as "a golden age of poetry". In naming those "who honored poesie with the pens of practice", he listed first Edward Earl of Oxford, followed by others including Spenser and Sidney but not Shakespeare or Shaxpere.
In Oxford's time the population of London and its suburbs was about 200,000 (the size of one of our small cities). In London plays were so popular some estimates claim there were at least 3 theaters, 4 acting companies, and several dozen playwrights. Oxford's life was interleaved with domestic and foreign royals, nobles, prominent persons, theater owners, producers, and writers of his time. It's incredible that he never met, crossed the path of, or ever conversed with London's putative popular playwright genius Shaxpere.
Sometime between Shaxpere's death (1616) and the First folio (1623), William Basse wrote a poem suggesting that Shakespeare (Shaxpere) should have been buried in Westminster Abbey beside Chaucer, Beaumont, and Spenser. In the First Folio, Ben Jonson wrote the following memorial verses:
My Shakespeare rise; I will not lodge thee by
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie
A little further to make thee a room.
Thou art a moniment without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
When Jonson wrote "My Shakespeare" he meant Oxford, who is a "moniment without a tomb". Oxford was buried without a tombstone. His monument is his canon, his poems and plays. These verses were written when Shaxpere already had a monument in Stratford.
Now we come to the First Folio published in 1623. It contains Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, 36 plays. Who published it and why? Oxford's youngest daughter Susan was married to Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery. His brother William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke was Lord Chamberlain in charge of publishing plays. The Master of Revels office was leased by Sir Henry Herbert, cousin of those earls. Oxford's oldest daughter Elizabeth was married to William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby himself an ardent theater enthusiast. Derby wrote plays, some claim in collaboration with Oxford, and owned a company of actors. Oxford's daughters Elizabeth and Susan, their husbands the Earls of Derby and Montgomery, Montgomery's brother the Earl of Pembroke, and their cousin Sir Henry Herbert were Oxford's extended family. They compiled and published the First Folio to honor him. The two brothers, Earls of Montgomery and Pembroke partnered, managed, and paid for its publication. Furthermore, Elizabeth and Susan appeared in masks written by Ben Jonson, who was patronized by Pembroke. Jonson wrote the preface to the First Folio and dedicated it to the two incomparable Earls of Montgomery and Pembroke. The earls considered the literary value of the First folio so great, it was more luxuriously bound than the Bible. They continued to protect Oxford and his heirs by concealing his name, using instead his pseudonym William Shakespeare. The earls' financial records covering many years show payments to several writers including Ben Jonson, but no payment to anyone named Shaxpere or Shakespeare. There's no evidence that Shaxpere knew or was patronized by these earls or Oxford’s extended family.
Q Why are we having this controversy?
A Because the Stratford man just doesn’t fit. It’s like saying a dwarf from Stratford was the strongest man in England.
Q What proof do you have the Stratford man's name was not Shakespeare?
A In Stratford his birth certificate and public records show different spellings of his last name: Shagspere, Shaksper, Shakspere, Shakspeyr, Shaxbere, Shaxpeare, and Shaxpere. All these names are pronounced with short a as in Shaxpere but none with long a as in Shakespeare.
Q In London wasn't Shaxpere known as Shakespeare?
A Stratfordians claim that in his Stratfordian dialect Shaxpere could have pronounced his name Shakespeare.
Q So, in London, it's possible Shaxpere was Shakespeare?
A It's possible he was called Shakespeare but there's no proof he was a writer of any kind or the poet and playwright Shakespeare.
Q In that case, why is Oxford the most likely author of the Shakespeare poems and plays?
A Because he satisfies all the requirements of time, intellect, social status, and literary talent. Well educated and traveled, he was gifted with extraordinary intellectual achievements in many disciplines.
Q Why did Shaxpere need to have all that knowledge?
A Because it's reflected in Shakespeare's poems and plays.
Q Isn't it possible that Shaxpere, or any writer, could get plots and character information from printed sources?
A Yes, but I don’t think your rustic Shaxpere was up to the task of turning that information into Shakespeare's literary style and poetic genius.
Q But isn't it true that Shaxpere was a rewrite artist? He rewrote from printed sources.
A That’s what some Stratfordians claim but even rewriters show themselves on occasion. Nothing in Shakespeare's poems and plays reveals the author to be the uneducated rustic. Shaxpere.
Q If Shaxpere used printed materail, why did he select only those sources about royals and nobles about whom he knew nothing?
A That’s one of the mysteries.
Q Isn’t it possible, irrespective of class, that Shaxpere transliterated printed sources to blank verse?
A Yes, it’s possible but poems and plays in the Shakespearean style were being published long before the boy Shaxpere learned to write.
Q What about bombasting blank verse?
A What about it? Poets easily cheated by filling out pentameters with words other than iambs. The technique, developed by Elizabethan poets, was necessarily made acceptable by the expository writings of professors of English. Professors who believe that the Stratford man was Shakespeare recite his words with the dirgity of a Requiem Mass.
Q Weren't plays written for recitation in the streets of London?
A That being true, those recitations became the greatest literature of all.
Q Isn’t it true that Stratfordians claim Shaxpere was an untutored genius
A Stratfordians claim Shaxpere was materialized from uneducated rustic to untutored literary genius. If that happened, it was a freak of nature whose mutantcy begot a genius capable of the greatest intellectual accomplishments in all literature.
Q Didn't Shaxpere's untutored genius make him the greatest of all playwrights?
A Wouldn't that reasoning be more applicable to a well schooled and tutored genius like Oxford?
Q Are you saying genius is provisioned by education and wealth? It's in the genes, so isn't it possible that Shaxpere was a literary genius?
A It is but in that case why didn't Shaxpere's literary contemporaries ever mention him as a writer? Oxford's literary contemporaries frequently claimed him England’s greatest poet and playwright. They even dedicated their works to him. Oxford was so facile with language that he had a vocabulary of almost 18,000 words, contrasted with Milton's 8,000 and the Bible's 6,000. As neologist, he added about 3,000 new words to the English language. Oxford's writings and his in depth knowledge still keep scholars busy.
Q Vocabulary doesn't write poems and plays. If it did, lexicographers would be the greatest writers. Couldn't Shaxpere have written the poems and plays?
A Sure, but it's unlikely. Most improbable of all, Shaxpere had to attain genius in a couple of years Then, without any writing experience, begin writing the greatest poems and plays in order to comply with publication dates and play performances. Moreover, some plays are infused with extravagant satire on contemporary manners using conventions of Italy’s Commedia dell'Arte which Shaxpere probably never heard of.
Q Why are so many plays set in Italy?
A Keep in mind Oxford was ridiculed as an Italianate Englishman. At least a dozen plays are set in Italy. Moreover, many characters in many other plays have Italian names. Ask yourselves, why would the provincial Shaxpere have any interest in royalty, nobles, foreign lands, and things Italian? Back in the boondocks of Stratford he probably never even heard of Italy.
Q Isn’t it possible that Shaxpere did write the poems and plays?
A Do you think it possible that an uneducated person, without trial of apprenticeship, sat down one day and began writing the greatest plays in the English language? Could an uneducated hick become a G. B. Shaw? Could an uneducated Siberian peasant write War and Peace? Could an ignorant Irish dirt farmer, digging potatoes out of rock crevices, write Ulysses? Do you think a handyman could sculpt a David or Pietà? No, no, mon ami, it ain't so; it didn't happen then and it won’t happen now.
Q Are you saying that talent is domained only in the well educated, well traveled, and well moneyed?
A Let me put it this way. It would be like a high school dropout hick, who never left the boondocks, abandoning his wife and children for New York City. There, without any writing experience, magically writes the greatest poems and plays in the history of American literature. It didn't happen then and won't happen now.
Q Aren't you claiming Shaxpere, because he was a commoner, didn't have the talent to write great plays about royalty and nobles?
A Yes, I am. Shakespeare’s plays are not about commoners. They're about royalty and nobles struggling for power. There are sardonic portrayals of prominent courtiers and ambitious statesmen who break promises, murder, and change allegiances for status and power, for deeds to huge tracts of land, and estates.
Q Do you think there was as much violence in Shakespeare’s plays as there is in our modern dramas?
A Yes but of a different kind. In Shakespeare’s plays the lust for power is so overwhelming that evil and murder achieve results. Today’s dramas are melodramatically taken over by violence merely to prolong and sometimes to create the drama. The violence is gratuitous, it has no meaning, it doesn’t go anywhere; it’s only achievement is to fill the time slot allocated to the drama.
Q If Shaxpere's originals were found, wouldn't that prove he was the author?
A No writing of any kind by Shaxpere has ever been found.
Q If Shaxpere were the author why would he discard or destroy his life's work?
A I don't know, another mystery. I don't think Shaxpere wrote anything. Keep in mind that nobles were forbidden to publish, so Oxford may have secreted them. Also, he lived in many places and his originals could have gotten lost in the moves. If found, someone either didn't want them around or hid them. It's part of the mystery. Recall that Anne Cornwallis found some of Oxford’s poems when he vacated Fisher’s Folly and that his sonnets were found in Kings Place after he died. Oxford lived in both of these places. Even today, with all our standard business procedures, originals get lost. For example, Clinton’s White House frequently lost billing records, memos, e-mail, and all sorts of correspondence.
Q If the play's originals have never been found, how about letters or notes?
A No writing by Shaxpere has ever been found. Nothing in Shaxpere's handwriting exists except for his 6 scrawling, illiterate signatures. In contrast, some of Oxford’s letters and notes still exist.
Q Some scholars claim Shaxpere had a handsome secretarial script. How can this be possible if his signatures are illiterate scrawls?
A The only examples of Shaxpere's penmanship are his 6 illiterate signatures, each spelled differently, each like anagrammatic chicken scratches in sand. Those signatures are not examples of a playwright having either a practiced penmanship or supreme control of the English language. In fact, I question Shaxpere's literacy.
Q Don't Stratfordians claim he was ill when he penned those signatures, that he was too weak to write legibly?
A His signatures were written at different times during his life. Are you inferring Shaxpere was too ill to write legibly his entire life? If so, how could he have penned the greatest poems and plays?
Q Isn't he claimed the greatest writer ever?
A You mean the Stratford man Shaxpere? That's the 400-year mystery isn't it?
Q If the original manuscripts have never been found, how could the First Folio be published?
A Keep in mind that, as Lord Great Chamberlain, Oxford wrote and produced plays for the queen. Upon her death King James I re-appointed Oxford Lord Great Chamberlain and put him in charge of the king’s acting company the King’s Men. Thereafter, Oxford entertained the king by writing and producing plays for the King’s Men. Naturally, some plays were in the hands of the Kings Men. When Oxford died in King’s Place his extended family probably found more plays. It's possible the Earl of Derby, himself a playwright, completed Oxford’s unfinished plays. When the earls informed King James I of their plan to publish the First Folio, the king probably gave the earls the plays in the possession of the King’s Men. In any case, the plays had to be in the hands of Oxford's extended family for it to compile them for the First Folio.
Q If Southampton was Shaxpere's patron, why didn't he publish the First Folio?
A There's no evidence Southampton was Shaxpere's patron. Even if he were, neither Shaxpere nor Southampton possessed any of the plays. If they were truly the theatrical addicts portrayed by others, why didn’t they have possession of the plays? If Shaxpere was the author, how did the plays get into the hands of Oxford’s extended family? Ay, another mystery.
Q Southampton was a theater enthusiast, so couldn't he get them from the King's Men?
A Of course but your question is moot because, in this case, there are records of when and who published the First Folio and it wasn't Southampton. Moreover, if Southampton was Shaxpere’s patron omitting their names from the preface of the First Folio would have been such a gross breach of social etiquette, and so contemptuous an act, it's inconceivable the Earls of Montgomery and Pembroke would have deliberately ignored their fellow nobleman and Shaxpere.
Q Why didn't the Earl of Derby join the Earls of Montgomery and Pembroke in paying for the First Folio?
A I don't know but Oxford's daughter, the Countess Elizabeth, was the earl's wife. She's the one who remarked that her father had spent his patrimony and impoverished his family by patronizing the theater, actors, and writers. My guess is that she probably restrained her husband from squandering money on the First Folio.
Q How many plays did Shakespeare write?
A Scholars don't agree on the number of poems and plays in the Shakespeare canon. Writing under the pseudonym Shakespeare, my guess is that Oxford wrote from 3-5 narrative poems, 36-39 plays, and 154 sonnets. The First Folio contains 36 of the 39 plays. His plays include about 1,300 characters and about 100 songs. Keep in mind not included in the First Folio are Oxford's poems, masks, and prefaces not subscribed by his pseudonym Shakespeare. He was an accomplished musician, more talented than some professionals. Shaxpere was not known to be a musician of any kind.
Q How do Stratfordians explain the discovery of Shakespeare's sonnets in King's Place, Oxford's manor?
A Ay, another mystery.
Q The sonnet's dedication page was absent the author's name, so why were the sonnets attributed to Shakespeare?
A Because they were found in Oxford's library and his pseudonym was Shakespeare.
Q Can you explain the famous Benezet Test?
A The Benezet Test is a compilation of 71 lines of Oxford's early poetry and Shakespeare's poetry. Several Ivy League professors of Shakespearean literature, experts mind you, were asked to review the verses to identify whether they were written by Oxford or Shakespeare. They failed to correlate verses and authors. When other Ivy League professors, so-called Shakespearean experts, were requested to take the test they also refused fearing they too would fail. Obviously, those pedants didn’t perceive that the verses were written by the same person, Oxford.
Q Isn't it true that writers write about what they know?
A The common belief is that writers reveal themselves in the process of writing. Yet, almost 400 years of literary investigation have failed to relate any parallel between Shaxpere's life and Shakespeare's poems and plays. Conversely, many events of Oxford's life are portrayed in the poems and plays. In fact, events of Oxford’s life accumulate to overwhelming circumstantial evidence that he's the pseudonymous author Shakespeare. During his life many of his literary contemporaries linked him to the poems and plays of Shakespeare. No Shaxpere contemporary ever linked him to any writing of any kind.
Q Why is there a such a longstanding controversy over Shakespeare? No one questions that Chekov, Ibsen, or Shaw wrote their plays.
A They had dated records, like copyrights, and were the known authors. Those playwrights fit their plays, playwright and plays being compatible. But claiming Shaxpere to be the author Shakespeare is like trying to fit a large square peg into a small round hole. He just doesn't fit. That is, an uneducated commoner writing with literary virtuosity and extraordinary intellectual power about the lives and conversations of the ruling class about which he knew nothing. Keep in mind Shaxpere himself never claimed to be a writer of anything.
Q Some say Henry VIII and Macbeth were written by John Fletcher. Others say Thomas Middleton wrote Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen. If Fletcher and Middleton wrote those plays, why didn't they use their own names and why attributed to Shakespeare?
A I don't know but consider this. Shakespeare was the most popular playwright in London, a known revenue producer. To make money, pirating agents may have attributed those plays to Shakespeare.
Q So some in the theater business were using the Shakespeare logo to sell plays?
A Apparently, pirating plays was common. It was like stealing from the internet. In 1605 plays such as The London Prodigal, A Yorkshire Tragedy, and The Troublesome Reigne of King John were written by lesser playwrights but attributed to Shakespeare.
Q Couldn't Shaxpere be the playwright writing under the name Shakespeare?
A Yes, except that he never mentioned it and neither did any of his contemporaries. There are no court records of Shakespeare ever suing those who pirated his plays, which is important because Shaxpere was very litigious. Court records show that several times he sued his neighbors to recover only a few shillings. Now here's the question: If Shaxpere were truly Shakespeare, why didn't he sue those who were stealing his most important and valuable assets, his name and his plays? For Shaxpere to eschew his ownership of plays was contradictory to the legal precedents he set for himself. His abstinence from legal action was contradictory to his miserly, penny-pinching character. It's clear to me that Shaxpere was not the Shakespeare whose plays were being pirated.
Q What proof do you have that he was a miser, a penny-pincher?
A He made money any way he could by peddling grain, wool, or stones, and dabbling in real estate. In a time of drought, he hoarded grain to extort higher prices from his neighbors, who demonstrated their anger by marching against him. In another incident, he demanded payment for some wine he had given to a clergyman, who thought the wine a contribution to the church. There are court records proving he sued neighbors several times to recover a few shillings. Would such a miserly man write "who steals my purse steals trash"? On the other hand Oxford, who tried unsuccessfully to make money, had utter contempt for it.
Q It was claimed that playwrights and part-time actors could not make enough money for a decent living, so where did Shaxpere get the money to buy New Place, reputedly the second largest house in Stratford?
A I don't know but he had a reputation as a go-getter, a peddler of sacked goods, and dabbler in real estate. It’s claimed he was a shrewd businessman. Perhaps he transacted deals in which he made money pirating plays. But if true, when did he find time to write all those poems, plays, and sonnets?
Q Didn't Southampton give him the money to buy New Place in Stratford?
A There's no proof of that.. Why would the Earl of Southampton gift Shaxpere money to buy a big house?
Q It was claimed that, patronized by Southampton, Shaxpere handed theater owners two plays a year.
A If he did, the opportunist Shaxpere could have pirated plays and made money as a play broker.
Q Assuming that Shaxpere was Shakespeare, and made enough money to be a shareholder in the Globe Theater, why didn't he own a residence in London?
A I don't know. In 1604, at the height of his putative creativity and popularity, he rented a room in the house of the milliner Christopher Montjoy. That’s hardly the domicile of the greatest playwright in England. Many noblemen would have been privileged to have patronized England’s greatest playwright and ensconced him in one of their manors. You see, nothing about Shaxpere fits the romantic reputation fabricated by his devotees.
Q Many of Shakespeare’s plays were published anonymously. If Shaxpere went to London to seek fame and fortune, why would he publish anonymously?
A Another mystery.
Q In either case, why didn’t Shaxpere include his London name Shakespeare on the title pages of his poems and plays?
A That's part of the controversy. You might think he'd want to publicize his name. It helps to be a celebrity while seeking fame and fortune.
Q Why would Shaxpere detract from his own prominence and celebrity by using a pseudonym? Wouldn't he want the public to know that he, Shaxpere, was the author?
A Of course, the opportunist would have put his name on anything to collect a few pounds.
Q We know why Oxford used a pseudonym but why would Shaxpere do so?
A I don't know. It doesn't make any sense, his anonymity eschewing fame and fortune, it totally contravenes his purpose in going to London. That aspect of Shaxpere's life continues to be a non sequitur. The greedy Shaxpere would certainly have demanded payment for his plays. Whereas Oxford, the pseudonymous Shakespeare, never wrote anything for money.
Q Speaking of pseudonyms, when did Oxford become Shakespeare?
A From about age 26, Oxford wrote under the pseudonym Shake-speare. The hyphen was commonly used by writers to signify a pseudonym. Later, Oxford also used the non-hyphenated Shakespeare.
Q If Shaxpere was Shakespeare, why would he have hyphenated his name to Shake-speare, giving the impression that he was using a pseudonym?
A I don’t know. It’s a true mystery. Conversely, Oxford had reason for hyphenating Shake-speare for all the reasons mentioned.
Q When the Oxford's moved out of Fisher's Folly and the Cornwallis' moved in, Anne Cornwallis found some of oxford's poems. Why did he not take his poems with him?
A Another mystery, perhaps he was disorganized. He admitted he didn't keep records. Perhaps he purposefully wanted his poems to be found and published under another name to avoid embarrassing himself and family.
Q If Shakespeare's originals do not exist, where did today's copies come from?
A The poems and plays we have today are the "censored literary correct" versions, probably printed from much revised copies of the originals and First Folio. They're like Biblical stories told long after their originals have been irretrievable lost. Keep in mind that Burghley and his son Robert controlled the disposition of public records and letters. Regarding Oxford, they could have discarded most of the records and originals favorable to his writing. If Burghley and his son had saved them, we might not have the author controversy.
Q Are you inferring there's a conspiracy against Oxford?
A Oxford is a skeleton in the Stratfordian closet. They don't want you to know he's in there, lest you open the door and see him in full daylight.
Q What's your conspiracy based on?
A Observation. Over time, actors act they don't write. How could the actor Shaxpere be in constant rehearsals and performances, transact business deals, research publications, and simultaneously be a full time writer transliterating multiple printed sources to bombast blank verse. If he were the author, he'd have spent half his life by candlelight dipping his pen in ink to write almost a million words for all those poems and plays. Then there's the time spent carousing at the Mermaid Tavern and in courts suing his neighbors. All that besides nature's obligations to eat and sleep. The more he’s examined, the more he remains the Stratford rustic.
Q That being true, why don't we hear more about Oxford?
A Because the entrenched Shaxpere community wants to maintain the status quo. They don't even mention the fact that Oxford's contemporaries acknowledged he was England's leading poet and playwright. No Shaxpere contemporary ever acknowledged or even mentioned him as a writer of anything. Let me put it this way. In the New Encylopaedia Britannica Micropaedia Greene gets 1 column, Lyly 2 columns, Marlowe 4, Sidney 3, Shakespeare 1½, Spenser 5. Oxford gets barely 1 column even though he was acknowledged by his contemporaries to be England's greatest poet and playwright.. In the Britannica Macropaedia Shakespeare gets 20 pages, Oxford none. Now if that isn’t a conspiracy, I don’t know what is.
Q What do you think would happen if Oxford is proved to be the pseudonymous Shakespeare?
A The entire Shaxpere population would become extinct. In a revelatory geysered eruption of truth their superheated Stratfordian steam would transmogrify their 400 year advocacy to the library shelves of mythology. English curricula would crash taking with it English professors, pedants, and publishers. Overnight, millions of articles and books in homes, libraries, schools, and on the internet would become obsolete. English courses would have to be updated. Imagine, Stratfordian professors would have to admit that their turgid pedantic opinions were deflated to the common mistakes of laity amateurs. Oxford's rebirth would force them to discard their scholarship as afterbirth. Publishers would be forced into the business of printing and distributing volumes of errata. In England the Shakespeare industry in Stratford would collapse, destroying a tourist Mecca making millions of dollars yearly. However, England could recover and even increase revenue by directing its Shakespeare tourists to several of the sites where Oxford lived. Tourists are enamored of strolling through manors and castles.
Q In dating the plays, doesn't Shaxpere's age fit better than Oxford's?
A I don't think so. Shakespeare's plays were being performed in London long before Shaxpere's arrival. Consider this, when Oxford was 24, writing poems and plays, Shaxpere was not writing anything at all because he was only 10 years old.
Q Shaxpere was alive in 1609, yet from that year to his death in 1616 why weren't any Shakespeare plays published?
A Another mystery but ask yourself the following. Would an aggressive greedy salesman deliberately withhold his best selling products from a constantly demanding public? I don't think so.
Q Shakespeare's name appears in theater records. Isn't that proof he was an actor with speaking parts?
A It proves the name Shakespeare is in the records. But who was he? It was reported he was a walk-on actor with nonspeaking parts, a telamoned guard holding a spear at stage entrances, shaking it at approaching strangers. In this scenario he could have been called a shake spear, an easy transition from Shaxpere to Shakespeare.
Q What proof do you have that he didn't have speaking parts?
A In Stratford, among other trades such as wool carder and peddler of sacked goods, he was a butcher's apprentice. It was said that before he slaughtered an animal, he’d apologize for killing it. But he stuttered, extending his apology to a speech. I believe that to be the best evidence supporting the claim that he was an actor.
Q Isn't it true that Shakespeare was part of an acting company and wrote plays for the Globe?
A Shaxpere never owned or was in charge of any acting company, and none of his contemporaries ever referred to him as a playwright or writer of anything. What we do know is that Oxford owned several acting companies, including the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men, and wrote plays for those companies under his pseudonym Shakespeare.
Q Why are the years 1585-92 known as Shaxpere's lost years?
A From ages 21-28, Shaxpere was not in London and no one knew where he was. Keep in mind that during those years, many Shakespeare plays were being performed in London and elsewhere.
Q Isn't it possible that during those years he was educating himself and travelling abroad?
A Anything is possible but there's no mention of his travelling anywhere except from Stratford to London. Stratfordians would give their front teeth to place him in Italy or in any relationship with the queen or her court. Furthermore, Ii he were travelling abroad educating himself he couldn’t be writing all those plays being performed back home in England. Ask yourself, who was writing those plays?
Q If Shaxpere weren't Shakespeare, why would they erect a monument to him in Stratford?
A Why indeed, he was one of Stratford's leading citizens. The truth is that in 1616 Shaxpere died in obscurity. If he were the author of the greatest plays and poems in English, his death went entirely unnoticed and unreported. No one mentioned, remarked upon, or memorialized his death. Years later, the 15 year old Martin Droeshout engraved the first Shaxpere monument showing a pudgy, balding man with a mustache holding a sack of something in his lap. Without the living Shaxpere, Droeshout had to engrave someone else's face. Computer analysis revealed that the engraved face has the same dimensions as the Gower Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. The conclusion is that Droeshout used the queen's face as a template for engraving Shaxpere’s face.
Q You said the first monument. Was there another?
A In 1747, 131 years later, Jannsen engraved a new monument showing Shaxpere as Shakespeare . It's the monument you see today in Stratford. It shows a slightly thinner balding man, with mustache and Vandyke beard, holding a pen and folio over a cushion which looks like a sack. Every writer knows you can't write on a cushion or sack. Even in death Shaxpere couldn't get rid of the sack, probably his most distinguishing feature.
Q If Shaxpere was never known as a writer of anything, why was the second monument necessary? That certainly proves he was a great and distinguished writer.
A It proves that Stratfordians transformed their common rustic to the Slick Willy of Tudor nobility, the sweet con of Avon. They created a Piltdown genius whose extraordinary literary virtuosity required him to perform miracles rivaling those of Jesus. From whole cloth, they cut the footcloth for Shaxpere's newly found livery - sartor resartus.
Q Popes have canonized hundreds of saints, each of whom performed at least 2 documented miracles. Why couldn't Shaxpere have miraculously transited from uneducated commoner to literary genius?
A He could have, except that there's no proof, documentation, or other evidence that he did so.
Q How about all the people who visit Stratford because they believe Shaxpere was the author?
A The Shaxpere ruse generates more than a million tourist dollars yearly for Stratford. It would be foolish for Stratford to deny Shaxpere's authorship, thereby giving up its profitable yearly income.
Q The frontispiece in my Shakespeare book has his portrait. Isn't that Shakespeare?
A Shaxpere never had his portrait painted. It was rumored that Richard Burbage, a contemporary actor, supposedly painted Shaxpere’s portrait but where is it?
Q Did Oxford ever have his portrait painted?
A Oxford had at least two portraits painted. In 1575 when he was traveling the Continent, Oxford had his portrait painted in Paris by an unknown artist. He was 25 and it's probably the painting he sent his wife, gifting her on the of the birth of their first daughter Elizabeth. The portrait shows Oxford in nobleman's dress with a slightly haughty look, hawking eyes, thin eyebrows, Roman nose, carefully trimmed thin mustache, and peaked cap with capband adorned with jewels and feathers. Another portrait is attributed to Marcus Geeraedts, who probably painted Oxford in his early forties while he was married to Elizabeth Trentham. It shows Oxford in nobleman's dress with a softer look, hatless, high forehead and auburn hair, Roman nose, full mustache, beard, and neck ribbon with pendant boar his family emblem. In 1940 a hi-tech examination of the Shakespeare portrait, the popular one you see today, revealed it to be forged on one of Oxford's portraits. It was forged as follows: Oxford's lace ruff was painted over with the typical necklace of a commoner, the face was fattened and hair painted out to Shaxpere’s baldness; also the noble Tudor red rose and the Trentham (Oxford’s wife) coat-of-arms were painted out, but detailed inspection under great magnification revealed that the de Vere boar is still discernable in Oxford's signet ring. Any art critic would conclude the Shakespeare portrait you see today was forged from Oxford's portrait deliberately altered to show a dumpy, balding Shaxpere as the personified folly of Shakespeare. That Oxford’s painting was forged is supported by the omission of the usual complimentary data such as name of painter, date painted, birth and death dates of the person painted. Stratfordian posterity transmogrified Shaxpere to the Jekyl and Hyde of portraiture.
Q Are you claiming Shaxpere couldn't possibly be Shakespeare?
A I am. The Shakespeare poems and plays are of such extraordinary intellectual accomplishment that the great German poet and playwright Johann von Goethe remarked "First comes God, then Shakespeare". Shakespeare is quoted more often than the Bible. In the pantheon of writers, Shakespeare sits in the honored place. No other writer has ever surpassed or even approached his intellectual and literary genius.
Q What about all those professors who believe that Shaxpere was Shakespeare?
A Eschewing nobility, those socialist professors in colleges and universities have maintained the greatest hoax in literature. Devoted to facts, they easily succumb to the hypostasis for miraculously transfiguring an uneducated commoner to untutored genius. They suggest that Shaxpere experienced a cerebral big bang, expanding his intellect to that of the greatest literary genius ever. If you believe that, you probably believe the sun revolves around the earth and President Clinton is a Carthusian monk.
Q Aren't universities still teaching the Stratford man was Shakespeare?
A Those universities perennially camouflage English 101 with old, overgrown ivy wherein lurks the avatar of their literary god. Don't send your kids to those institutions, their professors cannot discriminate between short a and long a. While claiming to be nonprofit educational institutions, they elaborate their educational ruse to tax exempt status. Greedy as Shylok, those institutions convert the Roman Coliseum to the green turf of football fields and the glittering floors of basketball gymnasiums for pouring profits into their bank accounts.
Q Why is it so hard to understand Shakespeare's plays?
A Because the plays are not tutorial. They don't explain what's going on and why. To appreciate those plays, you need a background in classical literature, English history, and Elizabethan language including its metaphors, puns, and word play. If that weren't enough, some leading characters have double names: Henry Prince of Wales is also Prince Hal, Henry Duke of Hereford is also Bolingbroke, Henry Percy is also Hotspur. In the Shrew Katharina, Katherine, and Kate are the same person whereas Gremio and Grumio are different persons.
Q Why are some plots so complicated?
A Some plays include plots merged from multiple sources. Some of those plots are ridiculous but the words and language remain eloquent and inspiring. Today Shakespearean plots live in American and British TV dramas whose convoluted plots, abetted by contrived subplots, are profanely interwoven for dramatic effect. The irrelevant characters and events of those subplots materialize without prerequisite, and for no apparent reason, except to extend themselves to required time slots. It's what Shakespeare did.
Q If Oxford's literary contemporaries knew he was Shakespeare why didn’t they reveal it?
A They respected his wish to remain anonymous. Besides, there’s no merit or profit in incurring the anger of a nobleman.
Q What about literary suppression then and now?
A We know about Elizabethan censorship, the literary suppression of certain writings, and prohibition against noblemen publishing. But as we delve into the recent past, we discover our own literary suppression. President FDR's polio went unreported, as did his adulterous affairs. Also unreported in 1941 was FDR’s deliberate and treacherous decision inviting Japan to strike the first blow at Manila and Pearl Harbor. Abetting Japan, FDR ordered our Pacific Fleet to muster in Pearl Harbor. The temptation for Japan to attack a stationary target, all our warships anchored in a row, was so enticing they accepted FDR's open invitation by bombing Pearl Harbor. The bombing killed at least 3 thousand American soldiers and sailors, and destroyed our military bases, which precluded us from any immediate retaliatory response. President JFK's repeated adulteries and executive failures were known but never reported by a friendly press. For example, JFK's heavily redacted press releases covered up details of his alleged backroom deals and plot to assassinate Fidel Castro. Governments always conceal unfavorable details. Do you think any government would make public facts they consistently deny? Some of those denied facts were recently made public by investigative reporters. You might ask, what has this to do with Shakespeare? Stratfordians are still covering up.
Q I still believe the Stratford Shaxpere wrote those poems and plays. It's possible isn't it?
A Yes, but I repeat none of his contemporaries ever mentioned him as a writer of anything and he never claimed to be a writer. There are still no links between Shaxpere and Shakespeare's poems and plays. I don't believe Shaxpere was the author for all the reasons previously stated. Conversely, Oxford's contemporaries cited him as England's greatest poet and playwright. I repeat my conclusion that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford was the pseudonymous author of the Shakespeare poems and plays.
End of Book
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