Hank Whittemore's Shakespeare Blog

Folks, it appears that Mark Anderson, author of SHAKESPEARE BY ANOTHER NAME, is taking the lead in showing that the latest “discovery” of a Shakespeare portrait is not — NOT — the real thing.  (It can’t be, since the man Shakspere of Stratford wasn’t the Bard in the first place.)  The thing that’s got me going is that the man who made this once-in-a-lifetime discovery, Alec Cobbe, is the very same fellow who, in 2002, made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery of an alleged early portrait of Henry Wriothesley Third Earl of Southampton.

Now, two of these discoveries in one lifetime is just one too many.  This stinks!  But it’s great for those of us who are in the anti-Stratfordian camp, because when it finally crashes and burns, the desperation of the traditional, orthodox folks — Stanley Wells, at the front of the line — will be further exposed.

(By the way, this time they’re making Shakspere an aristocrat!  In a few years, god wot, he’ll be an earl!)

So take a look over at Mark’s blogsite and watch him go after this fraud and pin it to the wall for all to see:

Mark Anderson’s Blog

Happy hunting, Mark!

And cheers from Hank

It was great to read about the new claim of authenticity for yet another portrait of the Bard — a claim supported by “the world’s foremost expert on Shakespeare,” yes, Stanley Wells, as reported 8 March 2009 in the Sunday Times of London.  The portrait had been in the possession of the Cobbe family, represented currently by Alec Cobbe, an art restorer:

THE HEADLINE: IS THIS THE REAL SHAKESPEARE AT LAST?

(The Answer:   “No!  Of course not!  Are you kidding?”)

But for us the most thrilling news was (1) that Wells and Cobbe will also claim that the portrait initially belonged to the Third Earl of Southampton and (2) that they’re “writing a book on Southampton and Shakespeare.”

The Young Earl of Southampton

This is terrific news in our view because there’s not a  sliver of any connection between William Shakspere of Stratford upon Avon and Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton.  None!  And now, in advance, even without knowing anything more about the new book by Wells and Cobbe, we look forward to showing how it fails to make any such connection. Yes, we know this in advance!

The rest, as Hamlet might say, is conjecture…

Mrs. Charlotte Stopes, who spent eight years in research for her Life of Henry Third Earl of Southampton in 1922, felt her own life had been a failure because she’d been unable to find proof of any connection between him and Shakespeare.  [Her splendid biography can be found online in full from the Library of the University of California – Irvine.]

The name “William Shakespeare” arrived in print as the signature to the dedication of Venus and Adonis (1593) to 19-year-old Southampton; and it appeared the next year on the dedication of Lucrece to the same earl; but never again did the great poet-playwright dedicate anything to anyone else, thereby linking Southampton to “Shakespeare” uniquely and for all time.

This connection between the two men is the single most important element in any biography of Shakespeare, but no one who holds onto the Stratfordian myth can take it any further.

There is no way the Stratford man could have written the intensely personal, intimate Sonnets to a great peer of the realm such as Southampton.  No way. No actor or poet could have scolded such a peer for refusing to marry and beget an heir of his blood; and no way could any commoner have written to the haughty young lord:  “Make thee another self for love of me.”

Nope!  No way!

Southampton would have run through him with his sword!

So, within the traditional context, the relationship between the author and the earl begins and ends with those dedications — until we realize that Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford adopted “William Shakespeare” as a pen name in order to publicly support Southampton, his unacknowledged son by Queen Elizabeth, in the power struggle during the 1590’s for control over the coming succession.

Oxford extended the pen name to be used on revised versions of  plays he had previously written (in the 1570’s and 1580’s) for Blackfriars and the Court — plays newly issued as by “Shake-speare,” the popular writer who had dedicated his work to Southampton.  

The pen name was political; it was all about royal politics and succession to the throne, as reflected by the plays of English royal history. And the political use of “Shakespeare” culminated in the special performance at the Globe Playhouse of Richard II on the eve of the failed Essex Rebellion, of which Southampton was co-leader.

Once the Stratford man is replaced by Edward de Vere, the door opens to a wealth of biographical and historical material.  For example, both Oxford and Southampton (a generation apart) were royal wards of the Queen raised in the custody of William Cecil Lord Burghley; and Oxford was the senior judge at the 1601 trial of Essex and Southampton, when he and the other peers were forced to render a unanimous guilty verdict.

So we look forward to the book by Wells and Cobbe about the Stratford man and Southampton, viewing it as yet another opportunity for us to point out the utter lack of evidence for any such relationship; and, by contrast, viewing it as another chance to further demonstrate the Earl of Oxford’s extraordinary record in the Sonnets of his father-son relationship with Lord Southampton, and, too, his record of Southampton’s “true rights” to succeed Elizabeth as King Henry IX of England:

“And your true rights be termed a Poet’s rage…”
Sonnet 17

In the previous chapter we stopped at Sonnet 34; and when Oxford is seen as writing one sonnet per day starting with Sonnet 27 upon the failed Essex Rebellion on 8 Feb 1601, we arrive next at Sonnet 35 on 16 Feb 1601, just three days before the treason trial of Essex and Southampton (who both wait in the Tower).

Oxford himself has been summoned to be the earl of highest rank on the tribunal sitting in judgment; Robert Cecil has orchestrated a travesty of justice ending with the twenty-five peers having no choice but to render a unanimous verdict of guilt.  Oxford will be forced to join in that verdict, thereby condemning Southampton (his royal son by Elizabeth) to death by execution.

Viewed for the first time in this context, the words of Sonnet 35 came as a sudden shock to me.  Here is Oxford trying to comfort the prince amid the death of his Tudor Rose lineage.  He writes beneath the “clouds and eclipses” of disgrace and dishonor that now “stain” the “Moone” (his mother, Queen Elizabeth) and their “Sunne” (royal son), the “bud” of the Rose lineage that is now filled with “thorns” and a “loathsome canker”:

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Rose have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both Moone and Sunne,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

[“Hath not thy Rose a canker, Somerset?” – 1 Henry VI, 2.4]

Oxford takes the blame for “authorizing” Southampton’s treason — which he calls a fault, a trespass, an amiss and a sin.  He authorized it by allowing his play Richard II to be performed at the Globe on the eve of the Rebellion — depicting King Richard giving up his crown and encouraging the public to “compare” Elizabeth with that weak monarch:

All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are.

But here come the next lines with what still appear to me as a “smoking gun” in terms of evidence supporting this radically new context of time and circumstance for Sonnet 27 onward.  Now in Sonnet 35, anticipating his painful role at the trial, Oxford refers to his son’s “sensual fault” (irrational crime) and tries to reassure him that he will bring in “sense” (rational arguments) to help him.

At the trial Oxford will be Southampton’s “adverse party” by having to vote to condemn him to death; but then later he will be his “Advocate” or lawyer, working behind the scenes to save his life and offering to sacrifice himself in the process:

For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense;
Thy adverse party is thy Advocate,
And ‘gainst myself a lawful plea commence.

We can see Oxford recording his own mental and emotional torture in this tragic situation.  He must be an “accessory” in collaboration with Cecil, who wants to deprive his son of any possibility of becoming King Henry IX upon Elizabeth’s death; he must be an “accessory” in collaboration with his “sweet” (royal) son, who, by his crime, has robbed them both of the throne and the chance to shape the future course of England:

Such civil war is in my love and hate
That I an accessory needs must be
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.

This verse, Sonnet 35, is packed with legal terms — faults, authorizing, trespass, excusing, fault, adverse party, Advocate, lawful plea, accessory — reflecting the specific circumstances of the moment.  This sonnet has been seen as referring to a story involving love and lust and sexual betrayal, but such a story is pure fiction, with not the slightest evidence to support it.

On the other hand, we’ve had the real-life drama of Southampton right in front of us all along, running on the bedrock foundation of documented contemporary history.

Isn’t it time for closed minds to open just a little?  Isn’t it time to take a look at what may well be the greatest “Shakespearean” story of all?