Those “Precepts” of Polonius and Burghley: Reason No. 14 Why the Earl of Oxford was the Man Who Wrote “Hamlet”

William Cecil Lord Burghley (1520-1598)

The way I see it, this one is a piece-a-cake.  Holler the word “precepts” to an Oxfordian and the odds, ten to one, are that you’ll get a quick reply about Polonius delivering “these few precepts” in Hamlet and how Edward de Vere the seventeenth Earl of Oxford would have known Lord Burghley’s real-life Certain Precepts, which were not printed until 1616, the year that William of Stratford died, and long after the play had been written.  Well, no, of course this is not proof that Oxford was “Shakespeare,” but, hey, it’s pretty cool…don’t’cha think?

Back in 1869, the scholar George French wrote Shakspeareana Genealogica in which he observed that in Hamlet the three characters of Lord Chamberlain Polonius, his son Laertes and his daughter Ophelia “are supposed to stand for Queen Elizabeth’s celebrated Lord High Treasurer Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley, his second son Robert Cecil and his daughter Anne Cecil.”  In other words, in the days before the “authorship debate” got rolling, there wasn’t any question in people’s minds that Polonius = Burghley; those three characters were “supposed” or generally thought to be modeled on Burghley, Robert Cecil and Anne Cecil.

Edward de Vere the seventeenth Earl of Oxford became a royal ward of Elizabeth at age twelve in 1562, in the custody of her chief minister William Cecil, Lord Burghley; and in 1571, at twenty-one, he entered an arranged marriage with his guardian’s fifteen-year-old daughter Anne Cecil.

When Burghley knew that his son Robert Cecil was about to set out on his travels in 1584, the year when most Oxfordians believe Oxford wrote the first draft of Hamlet, he wrote out “certain precepts” for him as guides to behavior – “and in some of these,” French noted in the nineteenth century, “the identity of language with that of Polonius is so close that SHAKSPEARE [yes, spelled this way, and in caps] could not have hit upon it unless he had been acquainted with Burghley’s parental advice to Robert Cecil.”  

My reason number 14 for contending that Oxford was “Shakespeare” focuses on those “precepts” by Polonius and Burghley.   It would seem evident that the author of Hamlet needed to be familiar with Burghley’s maxims, the better to mirror them and satirize them at the same time!  He had to have heard them “firsthand” – at Cecil House, for example, where Edward de Vere had lived from age twelve to twenty-one.

The first quarto of "Hamlet" appeared in 1603; this is the second one, the "authentic" version, twice as long, published in 1604, the year of Oxford's death.

[Such was the argument made in 2007 during the annual Shakespeare Authorship Conference at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon by Michael Cecil, the eighteenth Baron Burghley, who is directly descended from William Cecil, the first Baron Burghley.]

In the decades after J. Thomas Looney put forth Oxford as “Shakespeare” in 1920, orthodox scholars began to back away from Polonius = Burghley.  They’ve even tried to suggest that the two sets of precepts are not necessarily very similar.   Humbug!!!

The best online analysis of the Polonius-Burghley link is from Mark Alexander in his Sourcetext site at:

http://www.sourcetext.com/sourcebook/essays/polonius/corambis.html

Following are some comparisons, with the line breaks removed from Polonius’ speech [which is printed below in full, as it appears in the play].   Not only are these specific pieces of advice very similar; also, there is an overall resemblance of tone.

POLONIUS:

Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportion’d thought his act … be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

BURGLEY:

Be not scurrilous in conversation, or satirical in thy jests

POLONIUS:

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; but do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new hatch’d unfledged comrade.

BURGHLEY:

Let thy kindred and allies be welcome to thy house and table.  Grace them with thy countenance … But shake off those glow-worms, I mean parasites and sycophants, who will feed and fawn upon thee in the summer of prosperity…

POLONIUS:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

BURGHLEY:

Neither borrow of a neighbor or of a friend, but of a stranger, whose paying for it thou shalt hear no more of it … Trust not any man with thy life credit, or estate.

Lord Burghley and his son Robert Cecil (1563-1612)

Here is the speech of Polonius followed by the full text of Burghley’s ten precepts:

Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3

Polonius:

And these few precepts in thy memory

See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,

Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man,

And they in France of the best rank and station

Are of a most select and generous chief in that.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: to thine ownself be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Polonius and Laertes

CERTAIN PRECEPTE FOR THE WELL ORDERING OF A MAN’S LIFE

Son Robert:

The virtuous inclinations of thy matchless mother, by whose tender and godly care thy infancy was governed, together with thy education under so zealous and excellent a tutor, puts me rather in assurance of the hope that thou are not ignorant of that summary bond which is only able to make thee happy as well in thy death as life–I mean the true knowledge and worship of thy Creator and Redeemer, without which all other things are vain and miserable. So that, thy youth being guided by so all sufficient a teacher, I make no doubt but he will furnish thy life both with divine and moral documents; yet that I may not cast off the care beseeming a parent towards his child, or that thou shouldst have cause to drive thy whole felicity and welfare rather from others than from whence thou receivedst thy birth and being, I think it fit and agreeable to the affection I bear to help thee with such advertisements and rules for the squaring of thy life as are gained rather by much experience than long reading, to the end that thou, entering into this exorbitant age, mayest be the better prepared to shun those cautelous courses whereinto this world and thy lack of experience may easily draw thee. And because I will not confound thy memory, I have reduced them into ten precepts and, next unto Moses’ tables, if thou do imprint them in thy mind, then shalt thou reap the benefit and I the contentment. And these are they.

1. When it shall please God to bring thee to man’s estate, use great providence and circumspection in the choice of thy wife, for from thence may spring all thy future good or ill; and it is an action like a strategem in war where man can err but once. If thy estate be good, match near home and at leisure; if weak, then far off and quickly. Inquire diligently of her disposition and how her parents have been inclined in their youth. Let her not be poor how generous soever, for a man can buy nothing in the market with gentility. Neither choose a base and uncomely creature altogether for wealth, for it will cause contempt in others and loathing in thee. Make not choice of a dwarf or a fool, for from the one thou mayest beget a race of pygmies, the other may be thy daily disgrace; for it will irk thee to have her talk, for then thou shalt find to thy great grief that there is nothing more fulsome than a she-fool. Touching the government of thy house, let thy hospitality be moderate and according to the measure of thine own estate, rather plentiful than sparing–but not too costly–for I never knew any grow poor by keeping an orderly table. But some consume themselves through secret vices and their hospitality must bear the blame. Banish swinish drunkards out of thy house, which is a vice that impairs health, consumes much, and makes no show, for I never knew any praise ascribed to a drunkard but the well-bearing of drink, which is a better commendation for a brewer’s horse or a drayman than for either gentleman or serving man. Beware that thou spend not above three of the four parts of thy revenue, nor about one-third part of that in thine house, for the other two parts will do no more than defray thy extraordinaries, which will always surmount thy ordinaries by much. For otherwise shalt thou live like a rich beggar in a continual want, and the needy man can never live happily nor contented, for then every least disaster makes him ready either to mortgage or to sell, and that gentleman which then sells an acre of land loses an ounce of credit, for gentility is nothing but ancient riches. So that if the foundations sink, the building must needs consequently fail.

2. Bring thy children up in learning and obedience yet without austerity; praise them openly; reprehend them secretly; give them good countenance and convenient maintenance according to thy ability; for otherwise thy life will seem their bondage, and then what portion thou shalt leave them at thy death they may thank death for it and not thee. And I am verily persuaded that the foolish cockering of some parents and the overstern carriage of others causeth more men and women to take evil courses than naturally their own vicious inclinations. Marry thy daughters in time, lest they marry themselves. Suffer not thy sons to pass the Alps, for they shall learn nothing but pride, blasphemy, and atheism. And if by travel they attain to some few broken languages, they will profit them no more than to have one meat served in divers dishes. Neither by my advice shalt thou train them up to wars, for he that eats up his rest only to live by that profession can hardly be an honest man or good Christian, for war is of itself unjust unless the good cause may make it just. Besides it is a science no longer in request than use, for “soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer.”

3. Live not in the country without corn and cattle about thee, for he that must present his hand to the purse for every expense of household may be likened to him that keeps water in a sieve. And for that provision thou shalt need lay for to buy it at the best hand, for there may be a penny in four saved betwixt buying at thy need or when the market and seasons serve fittest for it. And be not willingly attended or served by kinsmen, friends, or men entreated to stay, for they will expect much and do little, neither by such as are amorous, for their heads are commonly intoxicated; keep rather too few than one too many; feed them well and pay them with the most, and then mayest thou boldly require service at their hands.

4. Let thy kindred and allies be welcome to thy table, grace them with thy countenance, and ever further them in all honest actions, for by that means thou shalt so double the bond of nature as thou shalt find them so many advocates to plead an apology for thee behind my back. But shake off these glowworms–I mean parasites and sycophants–who will feed and fawn upon thee in the summer of prosperity, but in any adverse storm they will shelter thee no more than an arbor in winter.

5. Beware of suretyship for thy best friend, for he which payeth another man’s debts seeks his own decay; but if thou canst not otherwise choose, then rather lend that money from thyself upon good bond though thou borrow it, so mayest thou pleasure thy friend and happily also secure thyself. Neither borrow money of a neighbor or friend but rather from a mere stranger, where paying for it thou mayest hear no more of it, for otherwise thou shalt eclipse thy credit, lose thy freedom, and yet pay to him as dear as to the other. In borrowing of money be ever precious of thy word, for he that cares to keep day of payment is lord commander many times in another man’s goods.

6. Undertake no suit against a poor man without receiving much wrong for therein making him thy competitor. Besides it is a base conquest to triumph where there is small resistance. Neither attempt law against any man before thou be fully resolved that thou hast the right on thy side, and then spare not for money nor pains, for a cause or two so being well followed and obtained may after free thee from suits a great part of thy life.

7. Be sure ever to keep some great man thy friend, but trouble him not for trifles, compliment him often, present him with many yet small gifts and of little charge, and if thou have cause to bestow any great gratuity let it then be some such thing as may be daily in sight, for otherwise in this ambitious age thou mayest remain like a hop without a pole, live in obscurity, and be made a football for every insulting companion to spurn at.

8. Towards thy superiors be humble yet generous; with thy equals familiar yet respective; towards inferiors show much humility and some familiarity, as to bow thy body, stretch forth thy hand, and to uncover thy head, and suchlike popular compliments. The first prepares a way to advancement; the second makes thee known for a man well-bred; the third gains a good report which once gotten may be safely kept, for high humilities take such root in the minds of the multitude as they are more easilier won by unprofitable courtesies than churlish benefits. Yet do I advise thee not to affect nor neglect popularity too much. Seek not to be E. and shun to be R. [Essex and Raleigh? -SFR]

9. Trust not any man too far with thy credit or estate, for it is a mere folly for a man to enthrall himself to his friend further than if just cause be offered he should not dare to become otherwise his enemy.

10. Be not scurrilous in conversation nor stoical in thy jests; the one may make thee unwelcome to all companies, the other pull on quarrels and yet the hatred of thy best friends. Jests when they savor too much of truth leave a bitterness in the mind of those that are touched. And although I have already pointed all this inclusive, yet I think it necessary to leave it thee as a caution, because I have seen many so prone to quip and gird as they would rather lose their friend than their jests, and if by chance their boiling brain yield a quaint scoff they will travail to be delivered of it as a woman with child. Those nimble apprehensions are but the froth of wit.

I have reprinted the above precepts from:

http://princehamlet.com/burghley.html

Published in: on May 24, 2011 at 6:47 pm  Comments (6)  
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Introducing a New Book on Shakespearean Authorship and the Earl of Oxford — “Four Essays” by Mike A’Dair

News Bulletin: A new edition is being printed and will be available in mid-August.   I hope anyone ordering the book is aware of this. -Hank, as of July 5, 2011.

I’d like to introduce you to a new book entitled FOUR ESSAYS ON THE SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP QUESTION by Mike A’Dair of Willits, California – journalist, scholar, poet, playwright, organic gardener and incisive thinker on the matter of Shakespearean authorship and Oxfordian biography.

In ninety pages Mike does a great job of setting forth the facts and hypotheses in clear, succinct language that kept me reading straight through.  He gives his views on the issues involved (the most controversial ones included) without apology.

“These four essays are offered as an introduction to the Shakespeare Authorship Question,” Mike writes.  “They are a distillation of the many works that I have read since 2003, and are intended for the general reader.”

First he offers 34 reasons why William Shakspere of Stratford could not have written the Shakespeare works; in the second essay, he offers 40 reasons why Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, was Shakespeare *; and in the final two essays, he delves into the most dangerous territory, i.e., the theories that Oxford was both the son of Queen Elizabeth and the father of her intended heir, Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton, for whom the Sonnets were written and compiled.

The book offers a coherent explanation for “why the identity of the man behind the Shakespearean mask was suppressed for more than three centuries.”

"Four Essays on the Shakespeare Authorship Question" by Mike A'Dair

You can buy Four Essays directly for $10.00 plus overhead, or a total of $15.00, which can be sent by check to:

Mike A’Dair

3631 Chinquapin Drive

Willits, CA 95490

* Mike’s list of 40 reasons is completely separate from my 100 reasons here on this blog; any overlap will be unintended, but, I should think, also not unwelcome.

Published in: on May 22, 2011 at 9:54 pm  Comments (15)  
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Titian’s Painting of “Venus and Adonis” – Reason No. 13 Why Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford was “Shakespeare”

"Venus and Adonis" by Titian, the painting that "Shakespeare" must have seen in Venice

VENUS AND ADONIS

By William Shakespeare

He sees her coming and begins to glow…

And with his bonnet hides his angry brow…

For all askance he holds her in his eye …

Now was she just before him as he sat,

And like a lowly lover down she kneels…

O what a war of looks was then between them!

"Great Oxford," the collection of essays from the De Vere Society, with its cover in reference to Dr. Noemi Magri's article about the Titian painting

Her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing,

His eyes saw her eyes as they had not seen them;

Her eyes wooed still, his eyes disdained the wooing;

And all this dumb play had his acts made plain…

Some time her arms infold him like a band.

She would, he will not in her arms be bound…

For shame, he cries, let go and let me go.

Lines 337-342; 225-6; 349-350; 355-360; 379

(My emphases in italics)

The author of Venus and Adonis by “William Shakespeare” (1593) describes a painting by Tiziano Vecellio, or Titian, in which Adonis wears a bonnet or cap.

This was the only Titian painting with that detail and, during Shakespeare’s time, it could have been seen only at Titian’s home in Venice. 

William of Stratford had never left England, but Edward de Vere the 17th Earl of Oxford had traveled throughout Italy during 1575-1576 (at age twenty-five), making his home base in Venice, where Titian worked until his death on August 27, 1576.

I continue to be struck by the simplicity and clarity of this piece of factual evidence presented in an article by the brilliant scholar Dr. Noemi Magri in Great Oxford: Essays on the Life and Works of Edward de Vere (2004), a collection of papers from the De Vere Society in England.

Tizanio Vecellio, known as Titian (1488?-1576), whose home in Venice was a mecca for princes, ambassadors, cardinals, artists and literary men

In her essay, entitled The Influence of Italian Renaissance Art on Shakespeare’s Works; Titian’s Barberini Painting: the Pictorial Source of “Venus and Adonis,” Dr. Magri writes that Titian made many replicas of his work and that Shakespeare based his poem on the only autographed replica in which Adonis wears a bonnet or hat:

“Titian’s painting was his source of inspiration, the thing that stimulated him to write a poem about this subject though he also had a thorough knowledge of Ovid … Shakespeare describes the painting in detail: he portrays the painting in words and the description is too faithful to ascribe it to mere coincidence…

“It is evident that Shakespeare’s Adonis is wearing a hat, a bonnet.  The mention of the bonnet is not coincidental.  This is the detail here taken as evidence of the pictorial source.”

With one fair hand she heaveth up his hat – line 351

Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear – line 1081

And therefore would he put his bonnet on – line 1087

Princes, cardinals, ambassadors and the like, as well as top literary figures, “never failed to pay Titian a visit” when they came to Venice, Dr. Magri notes.   His home was a kind of cultural center and such notables felt they could not leave without going to see the man who was the greatest painter of sixteenth-century Venice and, too, the first to have a mainly international clientele.  To be received into his house was an honor that brought them high prestige.

A drawing of Titian's house in Venice by Joseph Cadorin (1833) -- in Canciano S. Biri

“Considering de Vere’s desire for learning and his love for Italian culture, he must have felt the wish to meet him and admire his collection,” writes Dr. Magri.

(She provides evidence to confirm that the autographed copy with Adonis wearing a hat, now held in the National Gallery of Palazzo Barberini in Rome, was in fact at Titian’s house during the same time Oxford was in Venice.)

Anyone who studies even a little of Oxford’s life will conclude that he could not have failed to pay such a visit.

In the lines above, Shakespeare writes that Adonis looks at Venus all askance, which, Dr. Magri observes, “is a faithful and precise description of Adonis’ posture in the painting.”  Moreover their glances are “the central motif of the painting” and Shakespeare “has retained the dramatic pictorial element” in his description of their eyes such as “Her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing,” etc.

Also Shakespeare’s reference to all this dumb play is an accurate description: the play they have performed “is a dumb one since their words are not to be heard.”  The two protagonists, Venus and Adonis, “are not acting on a stage: they are painted on the canvas.”

Another by Titian -- without the hat

Dr. Magri even notes how Venus, reacting angrily to Adonis’s resistance, bursts out a clear reference to the painted image of him:

Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone

Well-painted idol...

So that’s Reason No. 13 why I believe Oxford was “Shakespeare.”   Oxford was there, in Venice, and so was Titian and the painting with the bonnet, or hat, that “Shakespeare” describes in Venus and Adonis.

We welcome any Stratfordian to comment and present us with a counterargument.

Published in: on May 14, 2011 at 3:44 am  Comments (11)  
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Reason No. 12 (Part Two) Why Oxford was “Shakespeare” — With the Creation of the Queen’s Men in 1583, he had the opportunity, the means, and the motive!

Sir Francis Walsingham, the spymaster who assembled the Queen's Men in 1583

Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford was 33 in 1583, when Queen Elizabeth’s company of adult actors was formed by the direct order of Sir Francis Walsingham, head of the government’s intelligence operations, just as the war between England and Spain was becoming official.  During the next crucial years, leading up to the victory over King Philip’s armada in 1588, the new company would perform at Court in winter and then in summer divide into two traveling troupes.  With its actors wearing the Queen’s livery representing Her Majesty and the Crown, the wartime company staged anonymous plays of English royal history to promote patriotic loyalty and unity.

During the 1580’s the Queen’s Men performed  works that “Shakespeare” would later turn into mature plays such as King John, Richard III, 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, Henry V and King Lear; and the record shows that Lord Oxford and John Lyly, his private secretary and stage manager, were closely connected to the Queen’s Men from the outset.   When put together, these two facts provide strong evidence that the author of the earlier works performed by the Queen’s Men was Oxford himself, and that it was he who revised his own previous plays for which”Shakespeare” would get the credit.

"The True Chronicle History of King Leir" -- acted by the Queen's Men in the 1580's, published in 1605, and the principal source of Shakespeare's "King Lear"

Oxford had returned from  Italy in 1576 and it appears that he proceeded to write plays that were brought to the royal court by the Children of St. Paul’s and by his friend Thomas Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, who was a kind of father figure to him.  [Oxford had served with him in the military campaign of 1570 against the northern Catholic earls in rebellion against Elizabeth.]  Sussex was also Lord Chamberlain of the Queen’s Household and patron of the first Lord Chamberlain’s acting company.  Two examples: (1) On New Year’s Day 1577 at Hampton Court the Paul’s Boys performed “The historie of Error,” which sounds like an early version of The Comedy of Errors attributed to Shakespeare; and (2) in Febrary 1577 at Whitehall Palace the Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed “The Historie of the Solitarie Knight,” which may have been a version of Shakespeare’s drama Timon of Athens.

When Edward de Vere was 30 in 1580 his secretary Lyly brought out his second book Euphues and His England, dedicated to Oxford and depicting an “Italianate” Englishman just like the earl himself.  (The two books, which Oxford may have partially or wholly dictated, were virtually the first English novels.)  Also in his service was Anthony Munday, whose Zelauto, the Fountain of Fame of 1580 was the second book he dedicated to Oxford; and in the same year Oxford also took complete charge of the Earl of Warwick’s adult acting company, whose leading men were the brothers Lawrence and John Dutton.

In addition to his patronage of writers, Lord Oxford now had charge of two acting companies, one consisting of adults (Oxford’s Men) and the other (Oxford’s Boys) consisting of choir boys from both Her Majesty’s Children of the Royal Chapel and Paul’s Boys.  And he had the full sanction of the government; for example, his father-in-law William Cecil Lord Burghley, the Queen’s powerful chief minister, along with Lord Chamberlain Sussex, recommended to Cambridge University in mid-1580 that Oxford’s Men should be allowed to “show their cunning in several plays already practiced by them before the Queen’s Majesty.”

In 1583 Edward de Vere stepped forth to save the private Blackfriars Playhouse from extinction, by paying for the lease of  this historic performance space.  (It was frequented by aristocrats and students, with performances functioning as rehearsals for appearances in front of Queen Elizabeth at Court.)  Soon afterward he passed on the lease to John Lyly, his director-manager.  Oxford was now at the very center of the new awakening of English literature and drama in England that would lead to “Shakespeare” in the following decade.

Thomas Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex (1526-1583), Oxford's friend and surrogate father, whose Lord Chamberlain's Men brought plays to Court until his death

Oxford’s friend the Lord Chamberlain Sussex fell ill and was nearing death when the order came down on March 10,1583 to Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels, that Her Majesty’s acting company be formed.  In effect the Queen’s Men would take over from the Chamberlain’s Men. (Sussex died that June.)  Assigned to assemble the personnel was secret service director Walsingham, who had no personal care for the theatre and had probably never set foot in a playhouse; but he was quite aware of the power of the drama.

As the Walsingham biography in Wikipedia observes, formation of the Queen’s Men “also signaled a new awareness on behalf of the Queen and the privy council of the potential for combining theatrical and espionage activities, since players frequently traveled, both nationally and internationally, and could serve the Crown in multiple ways, including the collection of information useful to Walsingham’s spy network.”

The spymaster assembled the Queen’s Men by first enlisting the twelve best performers from all the existing companies.  These of course included Oxford’s Men, whose leading players the Dutton brothers as well as other actors were transferred into Her Majesty’s troupe.  The popular clown Richard Tarlton was taken from Sussex’s troupe the Chamberlain’s Men and he quickly became the star of the Queen’s Men, which was now the largest company of actors in English Renaissance theatre.

“The new Queen’s Company made its first appearance at the beginning of the Court season on December 26, 1583,” B.M. Ward reported in The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford from Contemporary Documents (1928).  “On January 1, 1584 a performance was given  by Oxford’s Men; and as John Lyly appears in the Chamber Accounts as payee for the company on that date, there is every reason to believe, with Sir Edmund Chambers, that the play acted was Lyly’s Campaspe.  On March 8, 1584 both Oxford’s and the Queen’s Men performed; once again Lyly was payee for Oxford’s Men, and Sir Edmund confidently conjectures that the play acted was Sapho and Phao.

“Now, it seems unreasonable to suppose that two plays were presented on this day; the most likely solution, therefore, would be that the two companies [i.e., Oxford’s and the Queen’s] were amalgamated and rehearsed by Lord Oxford’s private secretary John Lyly, the author of the play.  No other adult companies besides these two appeared at Court during this season … The simplest solution is surely the one I have suggested, viz., that when the Queen’s Company absorbed some of Oxford’s leading actors Lyly was lent unofficially [starting in 1584] as stage manager and coach.”

So Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford was in position to respond to the Crown’s need for patriotic plays of English royal history; and, too, he was very much involved in the creation and operation of the Queen’s Men, whose actors would perform anonymous plays in the 1580’s that “Shakespeare” would later transform into masterpieces — another strong link in the chain of evidence that Oxford and “Shakespeare” were one and the same dramatist.

Published in: on May 11, 2011 at 5:57 pm  Comments (8)  
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Was “Shakespeare” a Copycat? Thief? Plagiarist? THE QUEEN’S MEN: No. 12 of 100 Reasons Why Edward de Vere was “Shakespeare” – Part One

"The Queen's Men and their Plays" by McMillin and MacLean, 1998

In 1583, as Philip of Spain prepared to invade and conquer England, the British government created a new acting company as part of Secret Service activities including wartime propaganda to promote patriotic loyalty and unity.  This new troupe, Queen Elizabeth’s Men, was formed at the express command of the monarch.  Drawing the best actors from existing companies, it became the dominant theatrical group in the crucial years leading to England’s victory in 1588 over the Spanish armada.

Although printed in 1594, "The True Tragedy of Richard the Third" was performed by the Queen's Men in the 1580's. Did "Shakespeare" steal it for his play "Richard III"? Or was the real author, Edward de Vere, building upon his own previous work?

During that period the Queen’s Men performed what were, by all appearances and by all logic, early versions of royal history plays by Shakespeare.  “The plots of no fewer than six of Shakespeare’s known plays are closely related to the plots of plays performed by the Queen’s Men,” according to Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth MacLean inThe Queen’s Men and their Plays (1998).

Did "Shakespeare" use this early anonymous play for "1 Henry IV," "2 Henry IV" and "Henry V" Or was "The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth" his own youthful play?

The known plays in this category are The Troublesome Reign of King John, repeated by Shakespeare “virtually scene for scene” in King John; The True Tragedy of Richard III and King Leir, whose stories are fully covered by Shakespeare in his Richard III and King Lear; and The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, which forms the entire foundation for the material that Shakespeare covers in 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV and Henry V.

The problem, however, is lack of any evidence that Shakspere of Stratford was a member of this prestigious acting company.  The likelihood is that he was still back home in Warwickshire when his twins were born in February of 1585, when he was twenty years old.  In other words, the existence of early Shakespeare plays performed by the Queen’s company in the 1580’s presents a major problem for the official biography.  You might say it blows it apart.

By tradition the “Lost Years” of the Stratford man begin in 1585 and continue until Robert Greene supposedly alludes to him in the fall of 1592.  By then, for the legendary story to be plausible, he has somehow firmly established himself in London as an actor who is already prominent enough as a playwright to provoke Greene’s jealousy and ire.

But this is pure fantasy.  “Documentary evidence as to Shakespeare’s whereabouts and activities from 1585 to 1592 is totally lacking,” Oscar James Campbell writes in The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare (1966), adding that “nothing can be confirmed” about the Stratford man’s life in that period.

Traditional biographers have had a terrible time trying to explain how “Shakespeare” was anonymously writing early versions of his plays for Her Majesty’s company in the 1580’s.  Some have suggested he must have joined as an actor and memorized the anonymous plays; then in the 1590’s, they propose, he drew upon his memory to plunder the plots, characters, scenes and even the lines of those stage works, which would mean that the greatest writer of the English language must have also been the most successful plagiarist in history!

"The True Chronicle History of King Leir" was performed by the Queen's Men in the 1580's (but published in 1605) and transformed by "Shakespeare" into "King Lear"


As a mature dramatist in the 1590’s, McMillin and MacLean declare, Shakespeare set about “rewriting a sizeable portion” of the repertory of the Queen’s Men.   “Four of nine extant plays were turned into six Shakespeare plays, in an act of appropriation extensive enough to make us think it could have occurred from the inside.  Shakespeare knew the plays of this company better than those of any company but his own, and the long-standing speculation that he may have begun his career with the Queen’s Men seems to us the most likely possibility.”  (And this leads them to think he must have recalled these works from acting in them during the 1580’s.)

"The Case for Shakespeare's Authorship of 'The Famous Victories'" by Dr. Seymour M. Pitcher, 1961

But some few scholars have bravely stated the far more realistic conclusion that Shakespeare himself wrote those earlier versions of his own plays.   In 1961, for example, Dr. Seymour M. Pitcher at Harpur College in New York wrote an impressively argued book The Case for Shakespeare’s Authorship of “The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth”.

That early play serves as a veritable blueprint for Shakespeare’s later trilogy about Prince Hal becoming the great Henry the Fifth who leads the English to victory at Agincourt.   Every single scene in Famous Victories is repeated (and in the same order) by Shakespeare, who must have written the earlier version when he was “a spirited and genial apprentice dramatist,” Dr. Pitcher concluded, adding it “may have been his first play.”

Orthodox scholars have ignored Dr. Pitcher’s suggestion, because it requires Shakspere to join the Crown’s prestigious acting company too early to be plausible.  Fresh from his life in the market town ninety miles from London, age twenty in 1584, he turns out plays of English royal history about monarchs such as King John, Richard Third, Henry Fourth and Henry Fifth – a miraculous example of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, if there ever was one.

A study of The True Tragedy of Richard the Third “reveals the high probability that it was Shakespeare himself who wrote that anonymous play,” according to the highly respected Oxfordian scholar Ramon Jimenez, “and that his Richard III was his major revision of one of his earliest attempts at playwriting.”

The scholar Ramon Jimenez, speaking at an authorship conference on the Campus of Concordia University in Portland OR

There are also “significant links” between the anonymous play about Richard the Third and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford “that add to the evidence that he was the actual author of the Shakespeare canon.”

Furthermore, Jimenez states, “The evidence suggests that the anonymous play was performed for an aristocratic audience, possibly including Queen Elizabeth herself, in the early 1560’s, when de Vere was between thirteen and fifteen years old.”

In the second part of Reason No. 12 we’ll take a look at the Earl of Oxford’s activities in relation to the Queen’s Men in the 1580’s and the likelihood that he was contributing those anonymous, early versions of plays  which he himself would revise later, for eventual publication under the “Shakespeare” pen name.

Published in: on May 5, 2011 at 7:33 pm  Comments (6)  
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First Movie Poster for “Anonymous”

Here’s a look at the first poster for Anonymous, the film by Roland Emmerich about Edward de Vere as Shakespeare, due in theaters September 3o, 2011…

One official description reads:

Set in the political snake-pit of Elizabethan England, Anonymous speculates on an issue that has for centuries intrigued academics and brilliant minds ranging from Mark Twain and Charles Dickens to Henry James and Sigmund Freud, namely: who was the author of the plays credited to William Shakespeare? Experts have debated, books have been written, and scholars have devoted their lives to protecting or debunking theories surrounding the authorship of the most renowned works in English literature. Anonymous poses one possible answer, focusing on a time when cloak-and-dagger political intrigue, illicit romances in the Royal Court, and the schemes of greedy nobles hungry for the power of the throne were exposed in the most unlikely of places: the London stage.

Published in: Uncategorized on May 5, 2011 at 3:04 am  Comments (4)  
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