A Lover’s Complaint by “William Shake-speare” (the name is hyphenated on the title page) appeared in print at the end of the first and only quarto of the Sonnets in 1609; the “Echo” poem “Sitting Alone Upon My Thought” in Verses Made by the Earl of Oxforde was written circa 1581. The similarities between the two works are unmistakable. If Oxford wrote the Complaint attributed to “Shake-speare,” he must have written it about the same time he wrote the “Echo” poem, nearly three decades earlier than 1609. Here is how they both begin:
A Lover’s Complaint by Shake-speare (1609)
From off a hill whose concave womb re-worded
A plaintful story from a sistering vale,
My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow’s wind and rain.
Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcass of beauty spent and done…
“Sitting Alone Upon My Thought” – (before 1581)
Sitting alone upon my thought in melancholy mood,
In sight of sea, and at my back an ancient hoary wood,
I saw a fair young lady come, her secret fears to wail,
Clad all in color of a nun, and covered with a veil;
Yet (for the day was calm and clear) I might discern her face,
Three times, with her soft hand, full hard on her left side she knocks,
And sigh’d so sore as might have mov’d some pity in the rocks;
From sighs and shedding amber tears into sweet song she brake,
When thus the echo answered her to every word she spake…
As one might see a damask rose hid under crystal glass.
Here, too, are lines from Ruins of Time attributed to Spenser (1591), also with remarkable similarities:
It chaunced me one day beside the Shore
Of silver streaming Thamesis to be,
Nigh where the goodly Verlame stood of yore,
Of which there now remains no Memory,
Nor any little Monument to see;
By which the Traveller, that fares that way,
This once was she, may warned be to say.
There, on the other side, I did behold
A Woman sitting sorrowfully wailing,
Rending her yellow Locks, like wiry Gold,
About her Shoulders carelesly down trailing,
And Streams of Tears from her fair Eyes forth railing:
In her right Hand a broken Rod she held,
Which towards Haven she seem’d on high to weld.
Each of the poems centers upon a mysterious maiden sitting alone and weeping. The Stratfordian model dictates that “Shake-speare” must have seen Ruins of Time before writing his Complaint; but Oxford had already written his Echo poem far earlier than 1591, so the likelihood is quite the reverse, i.e., that Spenser borrowed from him. And if Oxford had also written A Lover’s Complaint much earlier, then Spenser might have borrowed from that poem as well!
(This blog post is updated with editing by Alex McNeil and now appears as no. 82 in 100 Reasons Shake-Speare was the Earl of Oxford.)
The Echo: Re-Posting No. 45 of 100 Reasons to Conclude that “Shake-speare” was the Earl of Oxford
A Lover’s Complaint by “William Shake-speare” (the name is hyphenated on the title page) appeared in print at the end of the first and only quarto of the Sonnets in 1609; the “Echo” poem “Sitting Alone Upon My Thought” in Verses Made by the Earl of Oxforde was written circa 1581. The similarities between the two works are unmistakable. If Oxford wrote the Complaint attributed to “Shake-speare,” he must have written it about the same time he wrote the “Echo” poem, nearly three decades earlier than 1609. Here is how they both begin:
A Lover’s Complaint by Shake-speare (1609)
From off a hill whose concave womb re-worded
A plaintful story from a sistering vale,
My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,
And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale;
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow’s wind and rain.
Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcass of beauty spent and done…
“Sitting Alone Upon My Thought” – (before 1581)
Sitting alone upon my thought in melancholy mood,
In sight of sea, and at my back an ancient hoary wood,
I saw a fair young lady come, her secret fears to wail,
Clad all in color of a nun, and covered with a veil;
Yet (for the day was calm and clear) I might discern her face,
Three times, with her soft hand, full hard on her left side she knocks,
And sigh’d so sore as might have mov’d some pity in the rocks;
From sighs and shedding amber tears into sweet song she brake,
When thus the echo answered her to every word she spake…
As one might see a damask rose hid under crystal glass.
Here, too, are lines from Ruins of Time attributed to Spenser (1591), also with remarkable similarities:
It chaunced me one day beside the Shore
Of silver streaming Thamesis to be,
Nigh where the goodly Verlame stood of yore,
Of which there now remains no Memory,
Nor any little Monument to see;
By which the Traveller, that fares that way,
This once was she, may warned be to say.
There, on the other side, I did behold
A Woman sitting sorrowfully wailing,
Rending her yellow Locks, like wiry Gold,
About her Shoulders carelesly down trailing,
And Streams of Tears from her fair Eyes forth railing:
In her right Hand a broken Rod she held,
Which towards Haven she seem’d on high to weld.
Each of the poems centers upon a mysterious maiden sitting alone and weeping. The Stratfordian model dictates that “Shake-speare” must have seen Ruins of Time before writing his Complaint; but Oxford had already written his Echo poem far earlier than 1591, so the likelihood is quite the reverse, i.e., that Spenser borrowed from him. And if Oxford had also written A Lover’s Complaint much earlier, then Spenser might have borrowed from that poem as well!
(This blog post is updated with editing by Alex McNeil and now appears as no. 82 in 100 Reasons Shake-Speare was the Earl of Oxford.)
“Youthful Verse”: Re-posting Reason 44 of 100 Reasons Shakespeare was the Earl of Oxford
(Note: one or two words below are blue in color and link to advertisements; I am currently unable to remove these pesky things, so please ignore them.)
Some who cling to the traditional Shakespearean biography sneer at Oxford’s poetry, declaring it too inferior to be written by the great author; what these critics may not realize, however, is that many (if not most) of the earl’s signed poems were actually songs. Moreover, most were published in The Paradise of Dainty Devices of 1576, when he was twenty-six, and that he may have written them much earlier. Much later, in The Arte of English Poesie of 1589, he would be cited first among “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.”
Dr. Louis P. Benezet of Dartmouth College (1876-1961), a pioneer in educational reform, created a string of lines attributed to “Shakespeare” and mixed them with lines attributed to Oxford; then he challenged colleagues in the English Department to guess which lines were from which author. If they failed to guess correctly (as usually happened), the next question was, “Well, do you think it’s possible that all those lines came from the same poet?”
Following is a section of that test, using some of Benezet’s examples with some new ones I’ve thrown in; this is followed by a section with the same lines plus the name of the author – Oxford or Shakespeare – to whom they are attributed. It’s not scientific and “proves” nothing; but before looking at the answers, try guessing which lines come from “Shakespeare” and which from Oxford:
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
In constant truth to bide so firm and sure
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy
In true plain words by thy true telling friend
To scorn the world regarding but thy friends
Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, my heart?
Who taught thy tongue the woeful words of plaint?
The Earl of Oxford’s initials E.O. are on the cover page of The Paradyse of Dainty Devices, 1576, with Edward de Vere’s early poems and songs among the collection
If women would be fair, and yet not fond
Or that their love were firm and not fickle still
For if I should despair, I should go mad
And shall I live on th’earth to be her thrall?
A torment thrice threefold thus to be crossed
And since my mind, my wit, my head, my voice, and tongue are weak
My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming
If care or skill could conquer vain desire
Or reason’s reins my strong affection stay
Past cure I am, now reason is past care
My death delayed to keep from life the harm of hapless days
Desire is death, which physic did except
I saw a fair young lady come, her secret fears to wail
A plaintful story from a sistering vale
The Answers:
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
= Shakespeare, Sonnet 150, lines 9-10
In constant truth to bide so firm and sure
= Oxford, Rawlinson MS, “Earl of Oxenforde”
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy
= Shakespeare, Sonnet 152, line 10
In true plain words by thy true telling friend
= Shakespeare, Sonnet 82, line 12
To scorn the world regarding but thy friends
Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, my heart?
Who taught thy tongue the woeful words of plaint?
= Oxford, Rawlinson MS (“Earl of Oxenforde”)
If women would be fair, and yet not fond
Or that their love were firm and not fickle still
= Oxford, Britton’s Bower of Delights
For if I should despair, I should go mad
= Shakespeare, Sonnet 140, line 9
And shall I live on th’earth to be her thrall?
= Oxford, Paradise of Dainty Device (“E.O.”), 1576
A torment thrice threefold thus to be crossed
= Shakespeare, Sonnet 133, line 8
And since my mind, my wit, my head, my voice, and tongue are weak
= Oxford, Paradise of Dainty Devices, (“E.O.”), 1576
My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming
= Shakespeare, Sonnet 102, line 1
If care or skill could conquer vain desire
Or reason’s reins my strong affection stay
= Oxford, Paradise of Dainty Devices (“E.O.”) in 1577 edition
Past cure I am, now reason is past care
= Shakespeare, Sonnet 147, line 9
My death delayed to keep from life the harm of hapless days
= Oxford, Paradise of Dainty Devices (“E.O.”), 1576
Desire is death, which physic did except
= Shakespeare, Sonnet 147, line 8
I saw a fair young lady come, her secret fears to wail
= Oxford, “Verses made by the Earle of Oxforde,” Rawlinson MS
A plaintful story from a sistering vale
= Shakespeare, A Lover’s Complaint, line 2
There are hundreds of similarities between writings attributed to Oxford and to “Shakespeare,” for example:
= Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66:
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry:
As, to behold desert a beggar born
= Oxford:
Experience of my youth, made think humble truth
In deserts born
= Shakespeare, Sonnet 89:
As I’ll myself disgrace; knowing thy will,
I will acquaintance and look strange,
Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue
Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell.
= Oxford:
Thus farewell, friend: I will continue strange,
Thou shalt not hear by word or writing aught.
Let it suffice, my vow shall never change;
As for the rest, I leave it to thy thought.
= Shakespeare, Sonnet 114:
And my great mind most kingly drinks it up
= Oxford:
My mind to me a kingdom is
Can it be that the poetry Oxford wrote during his youth is the missing early work – the all-important apprenticeship – of the young Shakespeare? If we went looking for evidence of Shakespeare’s early poetry, the verses attributed to de Vere when he was young are exactly what we should expect to find. The other side of that coin seems true as well: that the more mature poems and sonnets attributed to “Shakespeare” are exactly what we should expect to find from the pen of the older, more experienced de Vere; and that, of course, leads to the conclusion that, in fact, Oxford’s mature poetry was published under the “Shakespeare” pen name.
Note: This blog post is now number 21 in 100 Reasons Shake-speare was the Earl of Oxford.
Elizabeth Tudor, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Wins “Dark Lady” Debate
The Phoenix Portrait of Queen Elizabeth by Nicholas Hilliard, c. 1575 – National Portrait Gallery, London
On Sunday (October 14), during its annual conference convened this year in Oakland, the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship held a three-way debate about the identity of the so-called Dark Lady of the Sonnets. Each of us agreed in advance that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford is the author and that Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton is the so-called Fair Youth, leaving the identity of the woman open for debate. John Hamill argued for Penelope Rich; Katherine Chiljan made her case for Anne Vavasour; and I supported Queen Elizabeth, who won by a secret-ballot vote of the membership in the audience. Each of the others made a formidable case, in his or her 20-minute opening presentation, making for an afternoon session of special excitement. Here, in full, is the overview I gave at the outset:
Making sense of the Sonnets can begin with the realization that these intensely personal lines were set down by the highest-ranking earl at the royal court – and that the beloved younger man is also a member of the court. But finding the story in the sonnets becomes possible only by also identifying the right woman.
Even if we knew nothing of the author, it’s clear this woman is someone of incredible importance to him, and wields enormous power over him – a woman with whom he’s been involved in a long, complicated relationship – whom he’s believed in and defended, even when she has failed to live up to his belief in her – a woman for whom, in the end, he has sacrificed the truth and betrayed himself.
I’d like to present evidence that the powerful, dominating woman we call the Dark Lady can only be the same powerful, dominating woman who pervades the lives of both those earls, and who pervades so much of Oxford’s writing – from his own early Shakespearean sonnet professing his devotion to Queen Elizabeth to his portraits of Venus and the Phoenix, Cleopatra, Titania, Olivia, Portia, Silvia, Queen Gertrude, and more. His final words to this powerful, deceitful, inscrutable woman sum up their long relationship that has now, in the end, drained his soul and left him in bitter disillusionment:
And all my honest faith in thee is lost;/ For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,/ Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,/And to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness,/ Or made them swear against the thing they see./For I have sworn thee fair: more perjured eye,/To swear against the truth so foul a lie.”
Has there ever been a more wretched confession of shattered illusion and self-betrayal?
Three themes about Queen Elizabeth as Dark Lady:
First, context: Identifying the queen allows us to locate the time frame and historical circumstances for these sonnets – a context every true story must have.
Second, metaphor: The darkness of the woman is not literal but metaphorical; and the metaphor is inseparable from Elizabeth and her imperial frown.
Third, language: Oxford employs the same words to and about the Dark Lady that he’s already used to and about the queen, and used exclusively for her.
Context: The overall context is that Oxford desperately wanted the Sonnets not only published and eventually read, but also, hopefully, understood – by readers in the future. The Sonnets are for “all posterity” and “eyes not yet created,” even when “tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.” So there must be an important story here, for us. He’s playing the long game, which means the story must transcend all strictly personal issues, no matter how deeply felt. It must involve some major situation to be recorded by English history. Given all we know about Shakespeare, the story must also involve some great issue of his own time; and the most pressing issue was the urgent need for an uncontested – and, therefore, peaceful – royal succession.
The vital publishing life of Oxford’s Shakespeare plays coincides with this growing alarm: What will happen if the queen dies before naming her successor? The great issuance of Oxford’s plays under the Shakespeare name occurred in the final years of her life, up to her death. The man was still trying to guide and protect her and his country.
And the contents of his revised history plays reflect this intensifying crisis. The British author Peter Lake aptly titles his recent book “How Shakespeare Put Politics on the Stage: Power and Succession in the History Plays.” His recurring theme is that Shakespeare was using history to raise awareness of the current crisis and ways of dealing with it. Elizabeth’s urgent responsibility was to put a successor in place, to avoid civil war and even possible takeover by a foreign power. But she could not – or would not – carry out this responsibility, and finally the tension boiled over in the Essex Rebellion of early 1601.
The rebels began by paying for a special performance of Oxford’s play Richard II, which Elizabeth knew was about her and the possibility of her being deposed, even killed. The earls were hoping to prevent Robert Cecil from further manipulating the queen to ensure his own survival. Oxford had portrayed Cecil as the hunchbacked tyrant Richard III; and now the secretary was terrorizing Elizabeth (“They were planning to kill you!”) and keeping her under his firm control. For Oxford, after a lifetime of service to queen and country, it was all crashing down with his cunning former brother-in-law maintaining total command of England. As James of Scotland put it, Cecil had made himself “king there, in effect.”
Now the context begins to reveal itself. Our goal, in my view, has always been to read these autobiographical sonnets to and about the Dark Lady (nos. 127-152) in conjunction with events that must comprise the framework and foundation of Oxford’s story. And once we see Elizabeth as this woman, it becomes clear that the story unfolds between the two most important events: the failed rebellion of 1601 and the queen’s death two years later in 1603. These moments, destined to be marked by history, are the two bookends. Then, from one to the other, the sonnets and events begin to illuminate each other and to bring the story to life.
It begins with Sonnet 127 on that tragic night when most young nobles of Elizabeth’s court have been jailed on charges of having plotted against her life. The age of “Gloriana” has come to an end. It’s over – and “therefore” the eyes of their sovereign mistress have turned “Raven black.” The ravens had become dread symbols of executions on the Tower Green. When Anne Boleyn was decapitated, it was said that “even the ravens of the Tower sat silent and immovable on the battlements, gazing eerily at the strange scene: a queen about to die!”
Now two former favorites, Essex and Southampton, are both set to die on that same Tower Green, so it’s no wonder the aging queen is in “mourning” as at a funeral. After the head of Essex is cut off, the beloved Fair Youth is next, and now his fate is also up to Elizabeth.
Imagine Oxford’s emotional turmoil over this tragic situation! He might even blame himself. All three of them – Southampton, Oxford, Elizabeth – are suffering. And so Oxford addresses the queen in words echoing those of Christ on the cross: “Of him, my self, and thee, I am forsaken, a torment thrice threefold thus to be crossed.” What other kind of situation would compel this proud nobleman and great author, who hated hyperbole, to liken his own suffering to that of Christ?
Back in 1911, the legal expert Edward White declared that Sonnets 133 and 134 “clearly refer to the confinement of Southampton in the Tower” and “express the poet’s desire to go his bail by substituting his person for that of his friend, in jail.” It’s Elizabeth who has Southampton in her prison, so Oxford begs her: “Prison my heart … but then let my friend’s heart let my poor heart bail. Who ere keeps me, let my heart be his guard; thou canst not then use rigor in my jail.” In other words: “I will not let you execute him in my prison!”
White also declared: “The poet proffers to forfeit himself as security for Southampton.” Oxford tells the queen: “So now I have confessed that he is thine, and I my self am mortgaged to thy will. My self I’ll forfeit so that other mine thou wilt restore to be my comfort still.”
Now he begs her Majesty to relieve his suffering by executing him instead: “O call me not to justify the wrong that thy unkindness lays upon my heart … Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain.” An old saying was that “monarchs have killing looks.” They kill, literally, with their eyes.
Waiting in the Tower, Southampton writes a lengthy poem to the queen, trying to save his life – the only poem by him that we know of. (Before Essex was executed, he, too, had written a poem to her Majesty while in the Tower. So clearly poetry was an important means of communicating with the queen – which makes three earls and former royal wards, each writing verse for Queen Elizabeth in relation to the very same dire circumstances.) In Southampton’s poem, discovered just several years ago, the earl reminds Elizabeth: “Only mercy is the prince’s own.” Only the monarch can deliver mercy; and when she does spare his life, a relieved Oxford responds in Sonnet 145: “Straight in her heart did mercy come.”
But time to settle the succession is running out; nor does Elizabeth seem to care about the ultimate fate of Southampton, who might be left to die in the Tower as a condemned traitor in perpetual confinement. So Oxford wails in amazing lines such as these in Sonnet 147: “Past cure I am, now reason is past care,/ And frantic mad with ever-more unrest;/ My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,/ At random from the truth, vainly expressed.” His continued loyalty to the queen stands at complete odds with her failure to name a successor and protect England from chaos and bloodshed.
James of Scotland has a blood claim, but with complications. He’s a foreign king, born on foreign soil, technically not qualified, and even more deeply unqualified in his character, not to mention that he’s also the willing pawn of Robert Cecil. For all that, however, he does have a claim; but still Elizabeth refuses to name him.
In the end Oxford delivers those final bitter words to the dying female monarch who has always been the most important person in his life: “And all my honest faith in thee is lost.” And now we can see the metaphor of the queen’s darkness.
Oxford established the metaphor in Sonnet 25: “Great Princes’ favorites their fair leaves spread/ But as the Marigold at the sun’s eye,/ And in themselves their pride lies buried,/ For at a frown they in their glory die.” Elizabeth’s favorite courtiers behave like her flower, the marigold, all opening to the warm light of “the sun’s eye” – her sovereign eye; but with just a frown casting her shadow of royal displeasure, their glory dies in darkness. That’s the metaphor, set forth by Oxford himself, and it’s inseparable from Elizabeth.
Of the twenty-six sonnets in this series, only five involve her darkness, and each time it’s a variation of that same metaphor:
In the opening sonnet (127), after eight lines, he reports: “Therefore” – “Therefore my Mistress’ eyes are Raven black,” – the raven, harbinger of death – “her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem” – the eyes of mourners at a funeral. It’s a metaphor. In 130, “My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” Back in those lines about the marigold, the queen’s eye was the sun; now, because of her imperial frown and negative view, the sunlight has disappeared. All is dark.
How the queen looks at someone or something is also what she does; and in 131 he tells her: “In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds.” In 132 her eyes have “put on” black, again in mourning; but if her eyes are already black, why would she have to put it on? Finally, in 147, she’s “as black as hell, as dark as night.” And that’s it for the darkness, all metaphor, all tied to the power of the queen’s negative view that turns day into night.
And now the language, to and about the queen:
For example, in 134: “I my self am mortgaged to thy will.” In a letter to Cecil about the queen, he promised not to “contradict her will.” A common saying was, “Others debate, but the king wills.”
In 140 she has “tongue-tied” or silenced him, the same as when his art is “tongue-tied by authority.” Well, the queen is authority; and she’s the only one who can tongue-tie or officially silence him.
He writes to her in 149 about being in “thy service.” He had told Burghley, “”I have engaged myself so far in her Majesty’s service to bring truth to light.” What other woman has he ever served? Also in 149 he’s “commanded by the motion of thine eyes.” In a private memo he urged the queen to give her “commandment.” And in King John he wrote about “the motion of a kingly eye.”
In his early sonnet about the queen, Oxford had blared forth his “love” and “constant truth” on her behalf. He was loyal and consistently honest. Now, as she nears death, he writes about her side of that commitment: about “thy” love, “thy” truth, “thy” constancy – the same three words; but in the end, she has had no love or truth or constancy. She has betrayed him and England itself; and therefore he has sworn falsely, all his life, by supporting and praising her.
Recall him telling how he has engaged himself in her Majesty’s service to bring truth to light; but now all his honest faith in her is lost. He admits he has had to “swear against the truth so foul a lie.” What other woman could force this strong-willed man of high rank, for whom truth was the most sacred value, to swear against it for her sake?
Soon after Oxford died the following year, 1604, came the printed full Hamlet. He must have labored to revise and expand this magnum opus right up to his last breath. In the final scene, Fortinbras comes down from the north to rule Denmark amid its royal wreckage, just as Cecil triumphantly brought James down from the north to rule England its crippled royal court. Hamlet bemoans his “wounded name” and implores Horatio to “tell my story.”
Five years later, 1609, the Sonnets are published for posterity; and I have no doubt they contain the story Horatio promised to tell the “yet unknowing world” about “how these things came about.” Here is Edward de Vere’s most personal voice – his own story – and the most direct revelation of his authorship.
Here is Oxford’s cry that his own wounded name “be buried where my body is.” Here is the truth of the great author at the royal court of England; his devotion to Southampton; his long, conflicted relationship with the queen; his fury and despair over her failure to protect his beloved isle, not to mention her unwillingness to liberate Southampton. Here is his confession of misguided loyalty and self-betrayal for her sake; and his swift disappearance within the black hole of official anonymity: “I, once gone, to all the world must die.”
Only when Queen Elizabeth is recognized as the powerful “dark lady” will the context, metaphor and language of the Sonnets enable Oxford’s untold story to finally come into focus – for posterity, for history, for us.
The Legal Mind of “Shakespeare”: Re-posting No. 43 of 100 Reasons Why the Great Author was the Earl of Oxford
“In Shakespeare’s multiple personalities, there is none in which he appears more naturally and to better advantage than in the role of the lawyer. If true that all dramatic writing is but a form of autobiography, then the immortal Shakespeare must, at some time in his life, have studied law.” – Commentaries on the Law in Shakespeare, 1911, Edward J. White
There’s not a shred of evidence that Shakspere of Stratford ever went beyond grammar school (if he attended at all), much less to a university or law school.
Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford served as highest-ranking nobleman on the tribunal at the February 19, 1601 treason trial of Essex and Southampton — as indicated by a contemporary notice of the event
Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford was seventeen in 1567 when he entered Gray’s Inn to study law. He was steeped in legal matters involving his earldom and the royal court; he sat on the juries at the treason trials of the duke of Norfolk (1572), Mary Queen of Scots (1586) and the earls of Essex and Southampton (1601).
A recent book, Shakespeare’s Legal Language (2000), contains a detailed discussion of Shakespeare’s legal terms and concepts. Authors B.J. Sokol and Mary Sokol point out that twenty-five of thirty-seven Shakespeare plays refer to a trial and that thirty-five contain the words “judge” and “justice.”
“Nothing adorns a king more than justice,” Oxford wrote to Robert Cecil in May 1603, referring to the newly proclaimed King James, “nor in anything doth a king more resemble God than in justice.”
Traditional scholars usually assert that Shakespeare didn’t really demonstrate an exceptional knowledge of the law, at the same time struggling to explain how he could have become so “law-obsessed,” as Sokol & Sokol put it.
Back in 1869, for example, Lord Penzance spoke of Shakespeare’s “perfect familiarity with not only the principles, axioms, and maxims, but the technicalities of English law, a knowledge so perfect and intimate that he was never incorrect and never at fault … At every turn and point at which the author required a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned first to the law. He seems almost to have thought in legal phrases…”
“Any intelligent writer can acquire knowledge of a subject and serve it up as required,” Charlton Ogburn Jr. writes in The Mysterious William Shakespeare, adding it is “something else to have been so immersed in a subject and to have assimilated it so thoroughly that it has become part of one’s nature, shaping one’s view of the world, coming forward spontaneously to prompt or complete a thought, supply and image or analogy.”
Oxford served on the jury at the trial of Mary Queen of Scots at Fotheringay Castle in October 1586 (drawing by Edouard Berveiller)
Mark Twain wrote in reference to Shakspere of Stratford that he “couldn’t have written Shakespeare’s works, for the reason that the man who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the law-courts, and law-proceedings, and lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways—and if Shakespeare was possessed of the infinitely-divided star-dust that constituted this vast wealth, how did he get it, and where, and when? . . . A man can’t handle glibly and easily and comfortably and successfully the argot of a trade at which he has not personally served. He will make mistakes; he will not, and cannot, get the trade-phrasings precisely and exactly right; and the moment he departs, by even a shade, from a common trade-form, the reader who has served that trade will know the writer hasn’t.”
Following is a small sample of excerpts from Oxford’s letters showing his familiarity with the law and legal matters:
“But now the ground whereon I lay my suit being so just and reasonable … to conceive of the just desire I make of this suit … so by-fold that justice could not dispense any farther … The matter after it had received many crosses, many inventions of delay, yet at length hath been heard before all the Judges – judges I say both unlawful, and lawful … For counsel, I have such lawyers, and the best that I can get as are to be had in London, who have advised me for my best course … [to Queen Elizabeth]: And because your Majesty upon a bare information could not be so well satisfied of every particular as by lawful testimony & examination of credible witnesses upon oath … So that now, having lawfully proved unto your Majesty … “
Oxford attended at the House of Lords on forty-four days during the nine sessions held 1571 to 1601. In the sessions from 1585 onward he was appointed one of the “receivers and triers of petitions from Gascony and other lands beyond the seas and from the islands.” In November 1586 he was part of a committee appointed to address Elizabeth on the sentencing of Mary Queen of Scots.
In Sonnet 46, the poet describes a trial by jury:
Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war
How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
Mine eye, my heart thy picture’s sight would bar
My heart, mine eye the freedom of that right;
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie
(A closet never pierced with crystal eyes),
But the defendant doth that plea deny,
And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
To ‘cide this title is impanelled
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,
And by their verdict is determined
The clear eyes’ moiety, and thy dear heart’s part:
As thus, mine eyes’ due is thy outward part,
And my heart’s right, their inward love of heart.
Scholars of the Stratfordian tradition have often speculated that “Shakespeare” must have been a lawyer. The fact that Oxford himself was a lawyer does not prove that he was the great author, but it is an important piece of the accumulated evidence in his favor.
[Above is the version edited by Alex McNeil and now no. 56 of 100 Reasons Shake-speare was the Earl of Oxford.]
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