Well before his untimely death on July 11, 2010 at fifty-five, Robert Sean Brazil had become one of the most formidable Oxfordian researchers and writers. Back in 1999 he had printed up copies of a work-in-progress called The True Story of the Shake-speare Publications: Edward de Vere & the Shakespeare Printers, now available online at Amazon. And among the many facets of this single work is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for Oxford’s authorship of the Shakespeare poems, plays and sonnets.
Brazil observed, quite simply, that “Shakespeare” personally edited some of his own works – at least five of them, according to statements on their title pages. The printers of these five quartos indicated or implied that the author himself had altered or enlarged the plays for publication, even after they had been performed at court or in the playhouse.
“The remarkable thing,” Brazil writes, “is that these five instances of advertised authorial corrections and additions all occurred during the time span of 1598 to 1604. In other words, there was a short window of time, six years, within which ‘Shakespeare the author’ showed an active involvement in improving printed versions of his works … After 1604, Shakespeare was apparently unavailable for revisions.”
Within the Stratfordian story there is no reason why the author would disappear from the publishing world in 1604, at the peak of his renown, and live in invisible retirement for twelve more years until his death in 1616. In the Oxfordian scenario, however, the reason “Shakespeare” was out of the loop after 1604 is that Edward de Vere died (or disappeared from England) that year.
Contrary to the traditional teaching that Shakespeare had no control over his play texts and no interest in them once they were sold to a publisher, here we have a procession of five different title pages, each indicating that the author had taken an active editorial role. Moreover this procession begins with the very first printing of the Shakespeare name on a play and it ends abruptly after Oxford’s departure.
The five plays advertised as edited by the author were these (Click on Images for Larger Views):
1598:Love’s Labours Lost: “As it was presented before her Highness this last Christmas … Newly corrected and augmented By W. Shakespere … Imprinted at London by W.W. (William White) for Cuthbert Burby.” This is the first play to carry the Shakespeare name, although it was spelled with “spere” instead of “speare.”
1599: Henry IV, Part One: “Newly corrected by W. Shake-speare. At London, Printed by S.S. (Simon Stafford) for Andrew Wise.”
The name is hyphenated, separating “Shake” and “speare” — indicating to readers that it’s likely a pen name.
1599: Romeo and Juliet: “Newly corrected, augmented, and amended: As it hath been sundry times publicly acted, by the right Honorable the Lord Chamberlain his Servants … London, Printed by Thomas Creede, for Cuthbert Burby.” Oddly enough, despite the corrections, augmentations and amendments, the author’s name is missing! This is issued by Cuthbert Burby, who published Love’s Labour’s Lost and surely knew who the author was. And the name is missing despite the fact that Shakespeare’s two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis of 1593 and Lucrece of 1594, both carried his name (on the dedications to the Earl of Southampton) and were bestsellers.
1602: Richard III: “As it hath been lately Acted by the Right Honorable the Lord Chamberlain his servants.
Newly augmented by William Shakespeare.
London, Printed by Thomas Creede, for Andrew Wise.”
1604: Hamlet: “By William Shakespeare.
Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much again as it was, according to the true and perfect copy.
At London, Printed by J.R. (James Roberts) for N.L. (Nicholas Ling).”
“The 17th Earl of Oxford can be linked to key Elizabethan publishers and printers for over four decades,” Brazil writes, adding that it began with his relationship with William Seres, a publisher from the earliest days of Elizabeth in the 1560s until about 1578. Seres printed the original version of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1565; 1567) credited to Oxford’s uncle Arthur Golding; he was the “stationer” in 1569 from whom Oxford purchased “a Geneva Bible, gilt, a Chaucer, Plutarch’s works in French, with other books and papers.”
CLICK ON IMAGE FOR A READABLE VIEW
Thomas Watson
Dedicates
“Hekatompathia” to
Oxford in 1582, saying the earl had “perused” it in manuscript
Robbie Brazil coined the phrase “Oxford’s Books” for publications linked to his patronage and even active involvement as writer or co-writer, noting that “Oxford’s Books have a robust, hyper-intelligent and even bawdy character,” so they comprise “a special collection in publishing history, because they can be shown to be the reading matter and linguistic universe that ‘Shake-speare’ as poet and wordsmith resided in.”
Such works issued between 1571 and 1586 include, for example, The Courtier, Cardanus Comfort, The New Jewel of Health, Zelauto, Hekatompathia, or the Passionate Century of Love, Euphues and his England and The English Secretary – “all pivotal pieces of the literary Renaissance in England, and these books are found reflected in the themes and language of the Shakespeare plays.”
Oxford’s name and talent “were either on display or being praised overtly” in more than eighty books (including reprints and revised editions) while the earl was alive, Brazil writes, naming twenty-three printers or publishers associated with “Oxford’s Books.” Of these, he takes special note of nine men who were also printers or sellers of Shakespeare quartos: Thomas Creede, Richard Field, Cuthbert Burby, Peter Short, James Roberts, Simon Stafford, Edward White, John Danter and John Harrison.
One of the “peculiar facts” that Brazil observed was that Cuthbert Burby, who published Love’s Labours Lost in 1598, also in the same year published Palladis Tamia by Francis Meres, the book that praises Oxford among those who were “best for comedy” while announcing that “Shakespeare” (without the first name) was not only a poet but the author of twelve plays including Love’s Labours Lost and, among the others, Romeo and Juliet. But the “peculiar” part of this story is that Burby, when he went on to publish Romeo and Juliet in 1599, failed to give credit to “Shakespeare”!
The first edition of Romeo and Juliet, a “bad” pirated version published in 1597 by John Danter, says nothing about Shakespeare. Burby’s edition in 1599 (the second quarto) contained a much better text (perhaps obtained by his printer, Thomas Creede, who had connections to Oxford), but it still carried no Shakespeare name. Even though Burby had published Palladis Tamia the year before, claiming Romeo and Juliet as a Shakespeare play, he failed to credit any author at all!
“It boggles the mind,” Brazil writes. “This is after Cuthbert Burby himself obtained the true text of the play in 1599! If Shakespeare’s name had a commercial cachet associated with it, why was his name not used on this publication of Romeo and Juliet? If Shaksper of Stratford, the man allegedly eager for fortune and fame, took the time to provide Burby or Creede with his complete manuscript, why was he not paid or at least acknowledged in the publication? It makes no sense unless someone other than Shaksper or the theater owners was providing real texts to the printers.”
And that someone, given the evidence, was Oxford.
Thomas Creede is crucial to Brazil’s study, because he was connected to Shakespeare material (accepted and apocryphal) as well as to books linked to the Earl of Oxford. As noted above, for example, he printed the 1602 quarto of Shakespeare’s Richard III; and a few years earlier, in 1600, he had printed The Weakest Goeth to the Wall “as it hath been sundry times played by the right honorable Earle of Oxenford, Lord great Chamberlaine of England his servants.” This play, Brazil writes, is apparently “the only instance in which Oxford’s name ever appears anywhere overtly on the title page of a printed play.”
Another case study centers on James Roberts, who, Brazil discovered, printed no less than five editions of books that featured Edward de Vere in some way: Gwydonius Card of Fancy Q2 by Robert Greene, 1587; Paradise of Dainty Devices Q7, 1600, with some of Oxford’s early poetry; Euphues and his England Q8, 1597 and Q9, 1601, as by John Lyly, dedicated to Oxford (the two editions counted as two books); and England’s Helicon, 1600.
It was James Roberts who printed the authentic 1604 version of Hamlet. Brazil notes that when this edition was officially entered in the Stationers Register by printer and agent James Roberts on July 26, 1602, the wording of the entry “indicates that the item Roberts brought in and deposited was a book or bound manuscript, already pre-existing” —
“James Robertes. Entered for his Copie under the hands of master Pasefield and master Waterson, warden, a booke called the Revenge of Hamlet Prince of Denmark as it was lately acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servants.”
Two years earlier, in 1602, Roberts had registered both Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida, but both were delayed. Brazil reasons that if Roberts didn’t know the author, but had received the texts in a “straightforward deal with a theatrical person,” he would have had no reason to delay publication. “The facts in the case suggest that Roberts knew the author personally, and was requested to hold the press on these books until further notice,” he concludes, adding, “Everyone agrees that Hamlet Q2 has a text that is completely from the pen of Shakespeare (whoever he really was). This re-write, dated 1603-1604, is the last time that the author interacted directly with the printers in the name of Shakespeare. James Roberts was a man known and trusted by the Earl of Oxford.”
And this reason to conclude that Oxford was “Shakespeare” begins to look like a veritable smoking gun…
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