Re-Posting Reason No. 2: “Shake-speare’s” Favorite Classical Source was the Translation of Ovid by Arthur Golding, who was Oxford’s Uncle

Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” translated into English — credited to Arthur Golding, uncle of Edward de Vere

The following blog item was posted on 26 February 2011; ultimately, after revision and reordering, it became part of 100 Reasons Shake-speare was the Earl of Oxford, published in October 2016. 

“Ovid, the love of Shakespeare’s life among Latin poets, made an overwhelming impression upon him, which he carried with him all his days: subjects, themes, characters and phrases haunted his imagination. The bulk of his classical mythology came from the ‘Metamorphoses,’ which he used in the original as well as in Golding’s translation.” –– A.L. Rowse, “Shakespeare, The Man” (1973)

I’ve always loved this one.  It was one of the first things I’d tell people around the dinner table, whether or not they gave a damn:

The favorite classical source of the author “Shakespeare” was the literary work of the ancient Roman poet Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18).   As Dr. Rowse tells us, he drew upon the stories and rhythms and language of Ovid, from the original Latin text and, heavily so, from the English translation of the Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding (1567).  And this same Golding was the young Earl of Oxford’s uncle, living under the same roof with him at Cecil House in the early 1560’s, just when the translating of Ovid’s 15-book masterpiece would have been carried out!

“I mean … come on,” I’d say at the dinner table.  “Ain’t that a hoot? Why are you all looking at me like I’m speaking a foreign language?  Oh, well…”

A lot of times these things are astounding only because of the way in which you come upon them.  In this case, the British schoolmaster J. Thomas Looney put forth hypothetically that Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) wrote the Shakespeare works, which are filled with material drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in both the original and the Golding translation of the 1560’s — and then he discovered that Oxford had been physically present at Cecil House in London during the 1560’s, when his Uncle Golding had been acting as his “receiver” for financial affairs and apparently translating the Ovid work.

Hedingham Castle (what’s left of the original), childhood home of Edward de Vere

(John de Vere, the sixteenth Earl of Oxford, died in 1562, when his twelve-year-old son Edward, the future seventeenth earl, left his home at Hedingham Castle in Essex and went to London to live as a royal ward of Queen Elizabeth in the custody of her chief minister William Cecil, the future Lord Burghley.)

Golding was “apparently” translating the Ovid because it’s far more likely that it was done by the young earl himself.  Golding was a puritanical sort who translated Calvin’s Psalms of David (which he dedicated to Oxford, his nephew) and would not have been crazy about translating Ovid’s tales of passion and seduction and lovemaking as well as incest by pagan gods and goddesses.  No, he was in every way incapable of it.

Here’s what I wrote about this in 1996, viewing the teenage Edward de Vere as “the young Shakespeare” at work:

“J. Thomas Looney used the phrase ‘long foreground’ for Shakespeare’s formative years, a period of necessary artistic growth and development which has always been totally missing from Stratfordian biography.  Unless he was a god with miraculous powers, the sophisticated English poet who wrote ‘Venus and Adonis’ went through much trial and error, creating a substantial body of apprenticeship work beforehand.  By all logic Shakespeare must have begun translating Ovid in his earliest years, becoming thoroughly grounded in his old tales.  He would have labored over the original texts and ‘tried on’ various English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, inventing new ones along the way; and in the process he would have acquired his astounding vocabulary of some 25,000 words, more than twice the size of Milton’s.”

The ancient Roman poet Ovid

And here is what Looney wrote in 1920 about the nature of some “discoveries” such as this one about Edward de Vere and Shakespeare’s favorite poet Ovid:

“The force of a conviction is frequently due as much to the intrinsic value of the evidence.  For example, when a theory, what we have formed from a consideration of certain facts, leads us to suppose that certain other facts will exist, the later discovery that the facts are actually in accordance with our inferences becomes a much stronger confirmation of our theory than if we had known these additional facts at the outset.  We state this principle in matters of science when we affirm that the supreme test and evidence of the soundness of a scientific theory is its power of enabling us to foresee some events as a consequence of others.  The manner, therefore, in which facts and ideas have been arrived at becomes itself an important element in the evidence.” – ‘Shakespeare’ Identified, 1920

“Shakespeare” Identified by J. Thomas Looney, 1920

So that’s the second of the first 100 reasons I conclude that Oxford was Shakespeare…

If there was any evidence of this kind in the life of William Shakspere of Stratford, would there be an authorship question?  I doubt it.  But such is the power of traditional thinking that, despite the fact that such evidence exists in Oxford’s life, the academic folks in the ivory tower won’t even consider it.

Meanwhile, the orthodox camp loves to say that the doubters of Shakspere’s authorship are “creationists.”  Well, that’s ridiculous.  If anything in that metaphorical equation we’re evolutionists. The biblical creationists came first, as did the traditional Stratfordians; the evolutionists came later, just as we Oxfordians came later.

Stratfordians, echoing creationists, believe in the miracle of genius when it comes to Shakespeare’s vast knowledge and skill; we Oxfordians, echoing evolutionists, know that such amazing knowledge, skill and insight can be acquired — even by a genius — only through long development based on much learning and experience and painfully acquired artistic growth.  That they would stoop to calling us a name that should actually be applied to themselves is a measure of their growing desperation…

Published in: on August 1, 2017 at 12:51 pm  Comments (3)  
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The Second of 100 Reasons Why Oxford was Shakespeare: Uncle Golding & Ovid!

“Ovid, the love of Shakespeare’s life among Latin poets, made an overwhelming impression upon him, which he carried with him all his days: subjects, themes, characters and phrases haunted his imagination. The bulk of his classical mythology came from the ‘Metamorphoses,’ which he used in the original as well as in Golding’s translation.” –– A.L. Rowse, “Shakespeare, The Man” (1973)

I’ve always loved this one.  It was one of the first things I’d tell people around the dinner table, whether they gave a damn or not:

The favorite classical source of the author “Shakespeare” was the literary work of the ancient Roman poet Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18).   As our two experts (quoted above) tell us, he drew upon the stories and rhythms and language of Ovid, from the original Latin text and, heavily so, from the English translation of the Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding (1567).  And this same Golding was the young Earl of Oxford’s uncle, living under the same roof with him at Cecil House in the early 1560’s, just when the translating of Ovid’s 15-book masterpiece would have been carried out!

“I mean … come on,” I’d say at the dinner table.  “Ain’t that a hoot? Why are you all looking at me like I’m speaking a foreign language?  Oh, well…”

A lot of times these things are astounding only because of the way in which you come upon them.  In this case, the British schoolmaster J. Thomas Looney put forth hypothetically that Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) wrote the Shakespeare works, which are filled with material drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in both the original and the Golding translation of the 1560’s — and then he discovered that Oxford had been physically present at Cecil House in London during the 1560’s, when his Uncle Golding had been acting as his “receiver” for financial affairs and apparently translating the Ovid work.

Hedingham Castle (what’s left of the original), childhood home of Edward de Vere

(John de Vere, the sixteenth Earl of Oxford, died in 1562, when his twelve-year-old son Edward, the future seventeenth earl, left his home at Hedingham Castle in Essex and went to London to live as a royal ward of Queen Elizabeth in the custody of her chief minister William Cecil, the future Lord Burghley.)

I say Golding was “apparently” translating the Ovid because it’s far more likely that it was done by the young earl himself.  Golding was a puritanical sort who translated Calvin’s Psalms of David (which he dedicated to Oxford, his nephew) and would not have been crazy about translating Ovid’s tales of passion and seduction and lovemaking as well as incest by pagan gods and goddesses.  No, he was in every way incapable of it.

Here’s what I wrote about this in 1996, viewing the teenage Edward de Vere as “the young Shakespeare” at work:

“J. Thomas Looney used the phrase ‘long foreground’ for Shakespeare’s formative years, a period of necessary artistic growth and development which has always been totally missing from Stratfordian biography.  Unless he was a god with miraculous powers, the sophisticated English poet who wrote ‘Venus and Adonis’ went through much trial and error, creating a
substantial body of apprenticeship work beforehand.  By all logic Shakespeare must have begun translating Ovid in his earliest years, becoming thoroughly grounded in his old tales.  He would have labored over the original texts and ‘tried on’ various English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, inventing new ones along the way; and in the process he would have acquired his astounding vocabulary of some 25,000 words, more than twice the size of Milton’s.”

The ancient Roman poet Ovid

And here is what Looney wrote in 1920 about the nature of some “discoveries” such as this one about Edward de Vere and Shakespeare’s favorite poet Ovid:

“The force of a conviction is frequently due as much to the intrinsic value of the evidence.  For example, when a theory, what we have formed from a consideration of certain facts, leads us to suppose that certain other facts will exist, the later discovery that the facts are actually in accordance with our inferences becomes a much stronger confirmation of our theory than if we had known these additional facts at the outset.  We state this principle in matters of science when we affirm that the supreme test and evidence of the soundness of a scientific theory is its power of enabling us to foresee some events as a consequence of others.  The manner, therefore, in which facts and ideas have been arrived at becomes itself an important element in the evidence.” – ‘Shakespeare’ Identified, 1920

“Shakespeare” Identified by J. Thomas Looney, 1920

So that’s the second of the first 100 reasons I conclude that Oxford was Shakespeare…

If there was any evidence of this kind in the life of William Shakspere of Stratford, would there be an authorship question?  I doubt it.  But such is the power of traditional thinking that, despite the fact that such evidence exists in Oxford’s life, the academic folks in the ivory tower won’t even consider it.

Another thought — which I should bring up in a separate blog, but I’d rather deal with it right here.  The orthodox camp loves to say that the doubters of Shakspere’s authorship are “creationists.”  Well, that’s ridiculous.  If anything in that metaphorical equation we’re evolutionists. The biblical creationists came first, as did the traditional Stratfordians; the evolutionists came later, just as we Oxfordians came later.

Stratfordians, echoing creationists, believe in the miracle of genius when it comes to Shakespeare’s vast knowledge and skill; we Oxfordians, echoing evolutionists, know that such amazing knowledge, skill and insight can be acquired — even by a genius — only through long development based on much learning and experience and painfully acquired artistic growth.  That they would stoop to calling us a name that should actually be applied to themselves is a measure of their growing desperation…

Cheers from Hank!

Published in: Uncategorized on February 26, 2011 at 1:13 am  Comments (5)  
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Re-posting Part Two of Reason 20 Why Shake-spreare was Oxford: The Depth of the Dedications to the Earl

The public dedications to Edward de Vere indicate the scope of his personal relationships with other writers.  The person who eventually created the “Shakespeare” works did not develop in a vacuum; on the contrary, he had to be part of a community of fellow authors, poets and playwrights. Oxford was not only part of such a community; the tributes make clear he was their leader.

"The Histories of Trogus Pompeius" by Golding, dedicated to 14-year-old Edward de Vere in 1564

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Arthur Golding (Histories of Trogus Pompeius) wrote to him in 1564: “It is not unknown to others, and I have had experiences thereof myself, how earnest a desire your Honor hath naturally grafted in you to read, peruse, and communicate with others as well the histories of ancient times, and things done long ago, as also of the present estate of things in our days, and that not without a certain pregnancy of wit and ripeness of understanding.”

Thomas Underdowne (AEthiopian History) told him in 1569 that “matters of learning” were good for a nobleman, but then warned the earl that “to be too much addicted that way, I think it is not good.”

In that same year the 19-year-old Oxford ordered “a Geneva Bible gilt, a Chaucer, Plutarch’s works in French, with other books and papers” as well as “Tully’s and Plato’s works in folio, with other books.”  Sounds indeed like a young man “addicted” to learning!

When Thomas Bedingfield dedicated his translation of Cardanus’ Comforte to Oxford in 1573, he told him that “I do present the book your Lordship so long desired,” confirming that the Earl had been personally involved in this publication, to which he contributed both a Letter to the Reader and a poem.   He reminds Oxford of “the encouragement of your Lordship, who (as you well remember), unawares to me, found some part of this work and willed me in any wise to proceed therein.”

Elizabeth & Courtiers

The distinguished physician Thomas Twyne (Breviary of Britain) referred to him in 1573 as being “in your flower and tender age” before inviting him to bestow  upon his work “such regard as you are accustomed to do on books of Geography, Histories, and other good learning, wherein I am privy your honour taketh singular delight.”

When Anthony Munday (Mirror of Mutability), told Oxford in 1579 that he looked forward to “the day when as conquerors we may peacefully resume our delightful literary discussions,” he was apparently referring to the rivalry between the Euphuists under Oxford and the Romanticists, who included Philip Sidney and Gabriel Harvey.  His reference to “our delightful literary discussions” offers a glimpse of Oxford personally engaged with other writers who were developing a new English literature and drama leading to “Shakespeare.” The works created by members of this circle would become known as “contemporary sources” upon which the great author drew.

Thomas Watson (Hekatompathia, or The Passionate Century of Love) reminded Oxford in 1580 that he had “willingly vouchsafed the acceptance of this work, and at convenient leisures favorably perused it, being as yet but in written hand.”  He cited de Vere as a literary trendsetter whose approval would draw many readers; because of this influence, the earl’s acceptance of the work in manuscript meant that “many have oftentimes and earnestly called upon me to put it to the press.”

Angel Day (The English Secretary) wrote to him in 1586 to Oxford about “the learned view and insight of your Lordship, whose infancy from the beginning was ever sacred to the Muses.”

Robert Greene (Card of Fancy) wrote publicly to Oxford in 1584 that he was “a worthy  favorer and fosterer of learning [who] hath forced many through your excellent virtue to offer the first-fruits of their study at the shrine of your Lordship’s courtesy.”

Dedication of “Defense of the Military Profession” by Gates to Oxford, 1579 (Click on Image to Enlarge)

In 1591 the composer John Farmer, who apparently lived in Oxford’s household, dedicated his first songbook (Plain-Song) to the earl, saying he was “emboldened” because of “your Lordship’s great affection to this noble science” (music) – which, of course, must be said also of Shakespeare.  In his second dedication (First Set of English Madrigals, 1599), Farmer told Oxford that “using this science as a recreation, your Lordship have over-gone most of them that make it a profession.”

In other words, Oxford encouraged young writers with their very first works, guiding them to the press.

Unlike the majority of dedications to patrons, the comments to Oxford are genuine and heartfelt. The earl may have had many faults of character, such as a tendency to be jealous and vengeful (as a number of Shakespearean characters are), but among his fellow writers and other artists he was uniquely spirited and generous.

In his Oxford biography Monstrous Adversary (2003), the Stratfordian scholar Alan Nelson concedes that Edward de Vere “attracts the attention of theologians, poets, distillers, and a musician, who have translated works from the Continent, or composed original works in English.” Citing the Index of dedications prior to 1641 by Franklin B. Williams (1962), he notes that only Queen Elizabeth and a few more powerful nobles had more dedications: Leicester (114); Burghley (85); Walsingham (47); and Charles Howard, the Admiral and hero of England’s victory over the Spanish Armada (46).

“CARDANUS Comforte, translated And Published by commaundement of the right Honourable the Earle of Oxenforde.” (1576 edition; click on image to enlarge)

In her Master of Arts in English thesis of 1999 at the University of Texas, focusing on Oxford’s patronage, Jonni Koonce Dunn notes that nearly forty percent of it was “expended on fiction with an Italian flavor.” The result, she adds, is that the Earl “provided the late sixteenth century with a body of source works to which the literature of the English Renaissance is sorely indebted.” Even from a young age, he preferred “literary work over the devotional or practical,” and such works “lent themselves to being models for adaptation for the forerunners of the novel as well as being instrumental in the development of English drama.”

His introduction as a young man to works such as The Courtier and Cardanus’ Comforte, she adds, “suggests his desire to be instrumental in shaping what was read by the university student and the courtier, thus in a roundabout way to transform the Elizabethan court into the cultured society depicted at Urbino in Castiglione’s work … It would eventually come to pass that William Shakespeare would benefit from the works de Vere patronized, for his plays came to make use of practically every one of the literary number in some fashion.” Without such patronage, many of the sources used by Shakespeare “might not have been available to him for inspiration,” and therefore this critical contribution “should ensure Edward de Vere the gratitude of every student of literature.”

[This post is now No. 38 of 100 Reasons Shake-speare was the Earl of Oxford (2016)]

Published in: on December 29, 2017 at 12:44 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Re-Posting No. 20 (part one) of 100 Reasons why Oxford was “Shakespeare” – The Many Dedications to Him

As far as I can determine, at least twenty-eight publications can be verified as dedicated (wholly or in part) to Edward de Vere by name during his lifetime. To that list we might add three more items: in 1592 Thomas Nashe apparently dedicates Strange News to Oxford, using another name for him; in 1603 Francis Davison includes him in a curious political broadsheet or circular; and in 1619 Anthony Munday dedicates a book to Henry de Vere, 18th Earl of Oxford, with warm posthumous praise for Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, his father, this bringing a tentative total to thirty-one.

Spenser’s dedicatory sonnet to Oxford referred to “the love which thou dost bear/ To th’Heliconian ymps [offspring from Helicon, the Greek abode of Apollo and the Muses), and they to thee,/ They unto thee, and thou to them most dear”

These dedications appear in works that range from Greek history to English literature, geography, military matters, music, medicine, astrology, translations from Italian and French, the Psalms, and so on — mirroring the wide range of subjects that Shakespeare was interested in from the European renaissance; they were very much part of the new age of English literature of which Edward de Vere was a central — perhaps the central — moving force prior to Shakespeare’s entrance in 1593.

The dedications to Oxford were not merely public bids for patronage; they were not the usual stuff of obsequious praise. On the contrary, they came from writers who worked with Oxford in developing common political and artistic goals.  Over and over they thanked him personally for taking time to read their works and give his advice.  He was not some lofty noble keeping his distance; instead, he rolled up his sleeves and became involved — personally, artistically and financially — in their varied works that covered so many subjects and forms of literary expression.

Here is a list of authors and their books with dedications to Oxford:

1/ 1564: Arthur Golding, Histories of Trogus Pompeius (Translation)

2/ 1569: Thomas Underdowne, An AEthiopian History Written in Greek by Helidorus (Translation)

3/ 1570: Edmund Elviden, Pesistratus and Catanea (Poetry)

4/ 1571: Arthur Golding, Psalms of David (Translation)

5/ 1573: Thomas Bedingfield, Cardanus’ Comforte (Translation)

6/ 1573: Thomas Twyne, Breviary of Britain … (Translation) [“Containing a Learned Discourse of the Variable State and Alteration thereof, under Divers as well as Natural, as Foreign Princes and Conquerors, together with the Geographical Description of the same…”]

“The New Jewell of Health” (1576) by Dr. George Baker, who dedicated two other books to Oxford

7/ 1574: George Baker:  Oleum Magistrale (medical; translation of Aparico de Zubia’s pamphlet) [“The Composition or Making of the Most Excellent and Precious Oil called Oleum Magistrale …” (Baker was surgeon to Oxford)]

8/ 1577: John Brooke, The Staff of Christian Faith, [translation of Guido’s French work into English) [“…profitable to all Christians … Gathered out of the Works of the Ancient Doctors of the Church…”]

9/1578: Gabriel Harvey, Gratulationum Valdenis (a book in Latin) [Celebrating the queen’s visit that year to Audley End; includes dedications in the first three parts to Elizabeth, Leicester and Burghley; and in part four to Oxford, Hatton and Sidney]

10/ 1578 (?): Anthony Munday, Galien of France (a book, now lost, that Oxford’s servant Munday, in The Mirror of Mutability, says he had dedicated to Oxford)

11/ 1579: Anthony Munday, The Mirror of Mutability (verses) [to serve as a religious companion to “The Mirror of Magistrates” – presenting a series of metrical tragedies “selected out of the sacred Scriptures,” illustrating the Seven Deadly Sins with biblical stories.]

12/ 1579: Geoffrey Gates, The Defense of Military Profession (a book in English) [An argument for the acceptance of the military man, and the military profession, as an essential and reputable member of society.]

13/ 1580: Anthony Munday, Zelauto, the Fountain of Fame (prose fiction) [This is the fifth or sixth Elizabethan novel, three of which are associated with Oxford: The Adventures of Master F.I., anonymous, part of A Hundredth Sundry Flowres, 1573; Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit (Lyly), 1578, and Euphues and his England (Lyly), 1580 (next on this list)].

Click on Image to Enlarge

14/ 1580: John Lyly, Euphues and His England (novel) [His first novel, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) was dedicated to Sir William West; the connection between them is not known.]

15/ 1580: John Hester, A Short Discourse … Upon Chirurgerie (Surgery) (translation) [Italian medical work by Leonardo Phioravanti (Fioravanti) Bolognese, rendered in English]

16/ 1581: Thomas Stocker, Diverse Sermons of Calvin (translation)

17/ 1582: Thomas Watson, Hekatompathia, or The Passionate Century of Love (100 sonnets, in English)

18/ 1584: John Southern, Pandora (compilation of verses) [Contains four epitaphs attributed to Oxford’s wife, Anne Cecil, written upon the death of their infant son; also one by Queen Elizabeth.]

19/ 1584: Robert Greene, Gwydonius: The Card of Fancy (“wherein the Folly of those carpet Knights is deciphered”) [Romance novel in English]

Title Page of “The English Secretary,” first edition, 1586, with a dedication to Oxford referring to his “exceeding bounty” or generosity

20/ 1586: Angel Day, The English Secretary (“wherein is contained a Perfect Method for the inditing of all manner of Epistles and familiar letters”) [Instructions on how a particular type of letter should be written, followed by sample letters.]

21/ 1588: Anthony Munday, Palmerin d’Olivia Pt. 1 – The Mirror of Nobility, (translation of a Spanish chivalric romance)

22/ 1588: Anthony Munday, Palmerin d’Olivia Pt. 2 (translation) [More of his “romances of chivalry” from the Spanish]

23/ 1590: Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen (book-length narrative poem) [One of the seventeen dedicatory sonnets is to Oxford, with reference to him as a poet.]

24/ 1591: John Farmer, Plainsong Diverse & Sundry (songbook) [Full title is “Divers and Sundry Waies of Two Parts in One to the Number of Fortie upon One Playn Song.” A collection of forty canonic pieces written by him, plus one poem.]

1592 (Not part of list): Thomas Nashe, Strange News (polemical pamphlet) [In response to Gabriel Harvey’s attack on Greene, dedicated to a prolific poet he calls by the pseudonym “Gentle Master William, Apis Lapis,” saying to him, “Verily, verily, all poor scholars acknowledge your as their patron” — with “verily, verily” as an apparent play on Oxford’s name “Vere” and describing his unique role as a patron of poets, writers and scholars needing his support.]

25/ 1597: Henry Lok, The Book of Ecclesiastes (book of verse) [Published by Richard Field, who had published Venus and Adonis in 1593 as by “William Shakespeare”; in this work, Lok addresses a dedicatory sonnet to Oxford — perhaps originally written in manuscript in a gift copy of the book for the Earl.]

26/ 1599: John Farmer, The First Set of English Madrigals (songbook)

27/ 1599: Angel Day, The English Secretary (new edition, revised)

28/ 1599: George Baker,The Practice of the New and Old Physic (medical book) [Originally printed in 1576 under the title New Jewel of Health, then dedicated to Oxford’s wife, Anne Cecil, who died in 1588; now Baker is one of the Queen’s physicians; the dedication to the Countess of Oxford is slightly altered to suit the Earl.]

In addition, these explicit mentions of him:

1603: Francis Davison, Anagrammata (broadsheet) [With curious writings in Latin to/about Oxford and Southampton and other nobles, with political overtones, some apparently related to the Essex rebellion of 1601.]

1619: Anthony Munday: Primaleon of Greece (translation) [“Describing the knightly deeds of armes, as also the memorable adventures of Prince Edward of England. And continuiong the former historie of Palmendos, brother to the fortunate Primaleon” — dedicated to Henry de Vere, the 18th Earl of Oxford, who was Edward’s son by Elizabeth Trentham, with warm praise from Munday for the father.]

These authors, and their books dedicated to the Earl of Oxford, have been cited as specific “sources” upon which “Shakespeare” drew. Yet we know of no book or literary work of any kind that was dedicated to Shakespeare.

[This post is now Reason 37 in the book 100 Reasons Shake-speare was the Earl of Oxford.]

[Once again thanks to editor Alex McNeil; also to Brian Bechtold with editorial help; and to Jonni Koonce Dunn for her Master of Arts thesis of 1999 at the University of Texas.]

Published in: on December 26, 2017 at 5:24 pm  Comments (1)  
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The Art of English Poetry: Re-Posting Reason 15 Why Shake-speare was the Earl of Oxford

Edward de Vere received a prominent place in an anonymous work The Arte of English Poesie (1589), regarded as the central text of Elizabethan courtly politics. His position in the world of letters had already been stated unequivocally in 1586, when William Webbe declared in A Discourse of English Poetry:

“The Arte of English Poesie” – 1589

“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.”

Now, three years later in 1589, another overview (this one by an unnamed author) is published by Richard Field, formerly of Stratford-upon-Avon and a Protestant printer close to William Cecil Lord Burghley. Field will issue Venus and Adonis of 1593 and Lucrece of 1594, both dedicated by “William Shakespeare” to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Modern scholars have attributed The Arte to George Puttenham, but others believe the author was Oxford’s friend Lord John Lumley; Richard M. Waugaman has set forth a case for Oxford’s own authorship.  [See Brief Chronicles, the online journal of the Shakespeare Fellowship, and Waugaman’s own online site The Oxfreudian.]

Partly the book may represent Oxford’s “eloquent pleading for the Queen’s commission for his writing the pro-Tudor ‘Shakespeare’ history plays,” Waugaman suggests, noting it “champions the persuasive power of poesy historical, while emphasizing that it [poetry or drama] is all the more instructive if it is not slavishly factual.”

The Arte is dedicated to Burghley, Oxford’s father-in-law and former guardian, but it’s actually addressed to Elizabeth herself. It emphasizes the importance of deception, disguise and anonymity.  The unnamed author says that many members of the nobility or gentry “have no courage to write & if they have, yet are they loath to be a known of their skill.  So as I know very 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.”

A page from “The Arte” showing the Elizabethans’ interest in structure, form, shape, architectural form and so on

He proceeds to name names: “And in her Majesty’s time that now is are sprung up another crew of Courtly makers, Noble men 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 Earle of Oxford, Thomas Lord of Bukhurst, when he was young, Henry Lord Paget, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, Master Edward Dyer, Master Fulke Greville, Gascoigne, Britton, Turberville and a great many other learned Gentlemen, whose names I do not omit for envy, but to avoid tediousness, and who have deserved no little commendation.”

The author of Arte knew he was putting a spotlight on Oxford and his literary work. Moreover, on the very next page the anonymous author of The Arte names just a few playwrights: “For Tragedy Lord Buckhurst and Master Edward Ferrys do deserve the highest praise: the Earl of Oxford and Master Edwards of Her Majesty’s Chapel for Comedy and Enterlude.”

[Edwards had been in charge of the Children of the Chapel from 1561 until he died in 1566, a period when Oxford {age eleven to sixteen} was studying with private tutors and receiving honorary degrees from Cambridge and Oxford.  Edwards is credited with writing two plays:  Damon and Pithias, the first English “tragical comedy,” set in the court of Dionysius and performed for Elizabeth’s court in 1565; and Palamon and Arcyte, a “lost” play based on Chaucer’s A Knight’s Tale — and regarded as a possible source for The Two Noble Kinsman attributed to Shakespeare and Fletcher — performed for the Queen at Oxford in 1566.

[A decade later several poems by Oxford appeared in The Paradise of Dainty Devices, an anthology that claims Edwards had compiled it before his death in 1566 – in which case, if true, it’s possible that Oxford’s poems were written no later than his sixteenth year; although he could have added to them any time up to 1576, since he himself probably caused the anthology to be published].

An excerpt of one of Oxford’s poems from Paradise was reprinted in Arte of 1589, wherein the anonymous author wrote: “Edward, Earl of Oxford, a most noble and learned gentleman, made in this figure of response an emblem of Desire, otherwise called Cupid, which for excellency and wit I set down some of the verses” — using the following example of an Oxford poem, in the form of a dialogue:

When wert thou born desire?

In pomp and prime of May,

By whom sweet boy wert thou begot?

By good conceit men say,

Tell me who was thy nurse?

Fresh youth in sugared joy.

What was thy meat and daily food?

Sad sighs with great annoy.

What hadst thou then to drink?

Unfeigned lovers tears.

What cradle wert thou rocked in?

In hope devoid of fears.

Arte speaks of a poet as a “dissembler” motivated by “a secret intent not appearing by the words.” The author offers the example of four lines referring to Queen Elizabeth – not by name, but in words that “any simple judgment might easily perceive” to be referring to her:

Elizabeth I of England

When Princes serve, and Realms obey,

And greatest of Britain kings begot:

She came abroad even yesterday,

When such as saw her knew her not.

It was common practice to write on two levels at once:

“And the rest followeth, meaning her Majesty’s person, which we would seem to hide leaving her name unspoken, to the intent the reader should guess at it: nevertheless upon the matter did so manifestly disclose it, as any simple judgment might easily perceive by whom it was meant, that is by Lady Elizabeth, Queen of England and daughter to King Henry the Eighth, and therein resteth the dissimulation.”

In this same year of 1589 Richard Field would also publish the second edition of the English translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, credited in 1567 to Oxford’s uncle Arthur Golding. Here at the end of the tumultuous decade of the 1580s, Oxford was about to leave public life and become something of a recluse. Was he using Field’s press to make a final appearance as an identified poet?  Was he withdrawing from the world while preparing to use the same publisher-printer under the “Shakespeare” just four years later?

[This post has become No. 29 of 100 Reasons Shake-speare was the Earl of Oxford]

Published in: on November 25, 2017 at 1:04 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Re-Posting Reason No. 3: Oxford Sponsored “The Courtier” — A Primary Inspiration for Prince Hamlet

“O what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword,
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form…”
— Ophelia speaking of Prince Hamlet

When Shakespeare created his greatest and most self-revealing character with the words and actiions of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, he drew upon his own intimate knowledge and obvious love for Baldesar Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano, that is, The Book of the Courtier, one of the great volumes of the High Renaissance.

Castiglione’s & The Book of the Courtier

Portrayed in the book is a group of real-life thinkers, politicians, soldiers, clerics, diplomats and wits who gathered together at the Palace of Urbino in 1507 to play a game, over four evenings, to try to piece together a portrait of the perfect courtier.

Their conversations about courtliness ranged “from chivalry to humanist debates about language, literature, painting and sculpture,” John Lotherington writes in his introduction to a 2005 edition from Barnes & Noble Books, “to the art of conversation and the telling of jokes, the role and dignity of women, the delicate job of guiding willful princes, and finally to love and its transcendent form in pure spirit.”

The Courtier, published in 1528, attempts “to refashion the medieval ideal of the chivalrous knight and to fuse it with the Renaissance virtues of learning and grace,” James Oscar Campbell writes in The Reader’s Encylopedia of Shakespeare (1966), adding that Shakespeare “may have derived the ‘merry war’ of Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing from a similar battle in The Courtier.”

The Ducal Palace at Urbino

“Shakespeare may have read Castiglione in Italian,” Charles Boyce writes in Shakespeare A to Z (1990) — a fairly amazing statement from one who supposedly believes the author was William Shakspere of Stratford upon Avon, who was unlikely to have been able to read works in Italian.

Translated into English in 1561 by Thomas Hoby, The Courtier exerted a strong influence on the courtly ideals of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.

The Courtier in English as translated by Thomas Hoby in 1561

A little more than a decade later, in January 1572, having just come of age as a courtier, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford made possible the publication of a new Latin translation of Castiglione’s work by one of his former tutors, Bartholomew Clerke.  To give it the biggest send-off possible, Oxford even wrote an eloquent introduction, also in Latin, which Charlton Ogburn Jr. in The Mysterious William Shakespeare (1984) called “a remarkably finished piece of work for a 21-year-old writing in a classical language.”

Oxford’s first biographer B. M. Ward wrote in 1928 that becoming a leader in war had been Edward de Vere’s goal, “if only because that was the normal expectation for any young nobleman seeking to fulfill his destiny,” but having been denied military service it was “only natural” that the young earl then turned to literature.

The Latin translation of The Courtier by Bartholomew Clerke in 1571, published from the Royal Court with Oxford’s blessing

But Ward also noted that most likely Edward de Vere had been captivated by literature from boyhood.  He had taken degress at Cambridge and Oxford universities at ages fourteen and sixteen; before age twenty his library had included works of Chaucer, Plutarch, Cicero and Plato, not to mention the Geneva Bible and “other books and papers.”

In 1571, the year before he issued his former tutor’s Latin translation of The Courtier, his uncle Arthur Golding noted in print that that he knew from personal experience how Oxford had taken a keen interest in “the present estate of things in our days, and that not without a certain pregnancy of wit and ripeness of understanding.”

Oxford in January 1572 was receiving the highest royal favor at Court.  The intimacy of his relationship with Queen Elizabeth was the subject of much scandalous gossip; the year before, he had married the Ophelia-like daughter of William Cecil Lord Burghley, the Polonius-like chief minister to the Queen.  Although he had grown up in the household and custody of Burghley, the architect of the Protestant reformation, Oxford leaned away from the Puritan movement and instead fell in love with classical languages and the old feudal values of knighthood and chivalry.

Elizabeth Tudor, Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603)

In his early twenties, he was the latest descendant of noble earls stretching back 500 years to William the Conqueror and, in every way, the man whom Walt Whitman would describe as one of the ‘wolfish earls’ who must have written the Shakespeare plays:

“Conceived out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism – personifying in unparalleled ways the medieval aristocracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic caste, its own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation) — only one of the ‘wolfish earls’ so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendent and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works — works in some respects greater than anything else in recorded history.”

When our modern world realizes sooner than later that Edward de Vere wrote the Shakespearean works, students will find more and more ways in which those works reflect his devotion to the ideas and ideals set forth by Castiglione, of whom the young earl wrote enthusiastically in his preface:

“For who has spoken of Princes with greater gravity?  Who has discoursed of illustrious women with a more ample dignity?  No one has written of military affairs more eloquently, more aptly about horse-racing, and more clearly and admirably about encounters under arms on the field of battle.  I will say nothing of the fitness and the excellence with which he has depicted the beauty of chivalry in the noblest persons.”

Drayton Henderson wrote a book in 1934 with a title that directly declared its theme:  Hamlet as a Castiglionean Courtier.  He also wrote introductory notes for the Everyman edition of The Courtier, stating that “without Castiglione we should not have Hamlet.  The ideal of the courtier, scholar, soldier developed first in Italy, and perfected in the narrative of Il Cortegiano, was Castiglione’s gift to the world,” adding, “Hamlet is the high exemplar of it in our literature.  But it is not only Shakespeare’s Hamlet that seems to follow Castiglione.  Shakespeare himself does.”

Hamlet the character is drawn in large part from Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier … Shakespeare created Hamlet as a special work of self-delineation … and it turns out that the leading candidate for the real author, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, strove to embody the “perfect courtier” as recorded by Castiglione in The Courtier — which, in turn, as a young man newly arrived at Court, he had read over and over and then caused to be published.

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword…

In the spring of 1570 the 20-year-old courtier Edward de Vere had been a soldier while accompanying the Earl of Sussex near the end of the Northern Rebellion, witnessing some battles of that English civil war; he was already known as a brilliant scholar;  he was famous for his sharp tongue and was the new champion jouster of the Whitehall tilt yard …

So that’s my Reason No. 3 why Oxford was author of the “Shakespeare” works.  The next installment, No. 4, will focus on the actual contents of the wonderful 1,100-word preface Oxford wrote for his former tutor’s Latin translation of The Book of the Courtier — a piece of writing that one day will be the basis of an essential chapter in the biography of the man who wrote the tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark:

O 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 a while
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story…

(Note: This post became Reason 7 in 100 Reasons Shake-speare was the Earl of Oxford by Hank Whittemore)

 

Published in: on August 10, 2017 at 11:01 am  Comments (10)  
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The Table of Contents for “100 Reasons Shake-speare was the Earl of Oxford”

I’d like to share the way in which the various elements have been organized for 100 Reasons Shake-speare was the Earl of Oxford:

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CHAPTER ONE: A MAN OF THE THEATRE

Reason 1 – The Patron-Playwright

Reason 2 – The Allowed Fool

Reason 3 – The Director-Actor

Reason 4 – Performance in the Tiltyard

CHAPTER TWO: HAMLET AND OXFORD

Reason 5 – Plays for the Court

Reason 6 – “Lights! Lights! Lights!”

Reason 7 – “The Courtier”

Reason 8 – “Hamlet’s Book” (Cardanus’ Comforte)

Reason 9 – The Polonius-Hamlet Family

Reason 10 – “These Few Precepts”

Reason 11 – “The Pirates”

Reason 12 – “The Kingdom of the Mind”

Reason 13 – “Hamlet’s Castle”

Reason 14 – “Beowulf” and Hamlet

CHAPTER THREE: FOOTPRINTS

Reason 15 – The Earl of Surrey

Reason 16 – Arthur Golding

Reason 17 – “Romeus and Juliet”

Reason 18 – Richard Edwards

Reason 19 – Oxford’s Geneva Bible

Reason 20 – The Gad’s Hill Caper

CHAPTER FOUR: OXFORD THE WRITER

Reason 21 – Youthful Verse

Reason 22 – “Love Thy Choice”

Reason 23 – Hawks and Women

Reason 24 – “New Glory of Language” (Re: Castiglione)

Reason 25 – A Public Letter (Re: Cardanus’ Comforte)

Reason 26 – Private Letters

CHAPTER FIVE: TRIBUTES AND ALLUSIONS

Reason 27 – Gabriel Harvey

Reason 28 – “A Pleasant Conceit of Vere”

Reason 29 – “The Art of Poetry”

Reason 30 – “Our Pleasant Willy”

Reason 31 – “One Whose Power Floweth Far”

Reason 32 – “Our De Vere”

CHAPTER SIX: THE UNIVERSITY WITS

Reason 33 – Shakespeare’s “Predecessors”

Reason 34 – John Lyly

Reason 35 – Antony Munday

Reason 36 – Thomas Watson

Reason 37 – A Diversity of Dedications

Reason 38 – A Depth of Dedications

CHAPTER SEVEN: WRITERS IN WARTIME

Reason 39 – The College of Writers

Reason 40 – “The Famous Victories”

Reason 41 – “The Policy of Plays”

Reason 42 – The Queen’s Men

Reason 43 – The 1,000-Pound Grant

Reason 44 – The Tilbury Speech

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE ITALIAN CONNECTION

Reason 45 – Shakespeare in Love … With Italy

Reason 46 – “Commedia dell’arte”

Reason 47 – Titian of Venice

Reason 48 – Portia’s House

CHAPTER NINE: THE MIGHTY LINE

Reason 49 – Christopher Marlowe

CHAPTER TEN: OXFORD AND ELIZABETH

Reason 50 – Oxford in the Plays

Reason 51 – Elizabeth in the Plays

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE SONNETS

Reason 52 – Oxford in the Sonnets

Reason 53 – Oxford and Southampton

CHAPTER TWELVE: SPECIAL KNOWLEDGE

Reason 54 – The French Connection

Reason 55 – The Greek Connection

Reason 56 – Legal Knowledge

Reason 57 – Knowledge of Power

Reason 58 – Military Knowledge

Reason 59 – Medical Knowledge

Reason 60 – The Sea and Seamanship

Reason 61 – “Methinks I Have Astronomy”

Reason 62 – Knowledge of Music

Reason 63 – Horses and Horsemanship

Reason 64 – Knowledge of Heraldry

Reason 65 – Gardens and Gardening

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE FRENCH MATCH

Reason 66 – “Monsieur”

Reason 67 – Bottom’s Dream

Reason 68 – “The Two Gentlemen”

Reason 69 – Portia’s Suitors

Reason 70 – Philip Sidney

Reason 71 – “Cymbeline”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: ASPECTS OF PLAYS

Reason 72 – “King John”

Reason 73 – Bertram and Oxford

Reason 74 – Suspicion and Jealousy

Reason 75 – The Bed Trick

Reason 76 – “Timon of Athens”

Reason 77 – Campion and “Twelfth Night”

Reason 78 – “The Winter’s Tale”

Reason 79 – “Troilus and Cressida”

Reason 80 – “Macbeth”

Reason 81 – “The Tempest”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: FINGERPRINTS

Reason 82 – The Echo

Reason 83 – The Northwest Passage

Reason 84 – “Ever or Never”

Reason 85 – “Truth’s Authentic Author”

Reason 86 – “I Am That I Am”

Reason 87 – “The Quality of Mercy”

Reason 88 – “You Are Not Ipse”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: FINAL STAGES

Reason 89 – “Best for Comedy”

Reason 90 – The New Clown

Reason 91 – Dramatic Literature

Reason 92 – Printers and Publishers

Reason 93 – The “Shrew” Plays

Reason 94 – A Pivotal Year: 1604

Reason 95 – “Minerva Britanna”: 1612

Reason 96 – George Chapman: 1612

Reason 97 – The Two Henries: 1619

Reason 98 – “The Compleat Gentleman”: 1622

Reason 99 – Daughters and Dedications

Reason 100 – “The Record of a Wasted Genius”

POSTSCRIPT – A Man and His Life

ILLUSTRATIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Published in: on October 30, 2016 at 8:59 pm  Comments (2)  
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Dedications to Edward, Earl of Oxford — Between 1564 and 1603

Publications dedicated to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford:

1/   1564: Arthur Golding, Histories of Trogus Pompeius (translation)

2/   1569: Thomas Underdowne, An AEthiopian History Written in Greek by Helidorus     (translation)

3/     1570: Edmund Elviden, Pesistratus and Catanea (poetry)

4/     1571: Arthur Golding, Psalms of David (translation)

5/     1573: Thomas Bedingfield, Cardanuss Comforte (translation)

6/     1573: Thomas Twyne, Breviary of Britain . . . Containing a Learned Discourse of the Variable State and Alteration thereof, under Divers as well as Natural, as Foreign Princes and Conquerors, together with the Geographical Description of the same . . . (translation)

7/     1574: George Baker, M.D., Oleum Magistrale – the Composition or Making of the Most Excellent and Precious Oil called Oleum Magistrale (medical; translation)

8/     1577: John Brooke, The Staff of Christian Faith, profitable to all Christians … Gathered out of the Works of the Ancient Doctors of the Church . . . (translation)

9     1579: Anthony Munday, The Mirror of Mutability

10/     1579: Geoffrey Gates, The Defense of the Military Profession

11/     1580: Anthony Munday, Zelauto, the Fountain of Fame        

12/   1580: John Lyly, Euphues and His England (novel)

13/     1580: John Hester, A Short Discourse upon Surgery [by] Master Leonardo Phioravanti Bolognese, translated out of Italian into English

14/     1581: Thomas Stocker, Diverse Sermons of Calvin (translation)

15/     1582: Thomas Watson, Hekatompathia, or The Passionate Century of Love (100 sonnets)

16/     1584: John Southern, Pandora

17/   1584: Robert Greene, Greene’s Card of Fancy, wherein the Folly of those carpet Knights is deciphered

18/     1586: Angel Day, The English Secretary, wherein is contained a Perfect Method for the inditing of all manner of Epistles and familiar letters…

19/ 1588: Anthony Munday, Palmerin d’Olivia Pt. 1 – The Mirror of Nobility (translation)

20/ 1588: Anthony Munday, Palmerin d’Olivia Pt. 2 (translation)

21/   1590: Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen

22/   1591: John Farmer, Plainsong Diverse & Sundry

23/   1592: Thomas Nashe, Strange News

24/   1597: Henry Lok, The Book of Ecclesiastes

25/   1599: John Farmer, The First Set of English Madrigals

26/   1599: Angel Day, The English Secretary (revised edition)

27/   1599: George Baker, New and Old Physic

28/   1603: Francis Davison, Anagrammata

/////

 1619: Anthony Munday, Primaleon of Greece (translation)—dedicated to Henry de Vere, the 18th Earl, who was Edward’s son by Elizabeth Trentham, with warm praise for the father.

 

Published in: on April 19, 2016 at 8:24 am  Comments (10)  
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More on the Portrait Evoking “Shakespeare” on “The Herball” of 1597 — A Perceptive Comment from a Reader

The following comment comes from a reader in response to a recent post on this blog site that began, “There is a delicious irony in the discovery, claimed this week by British botanist and historian Mark Griffiths, that an engraving on the inside title page of the 1597 book The Herball, or General History of Plants by horticulturist John Gerard (1545-1612) contains a portrait of ‘William Shakespeare.’  Based on the evidence so far, Griffiths is probably correct!  And it all points not only to ‘Shakespeare’ but, equally, to Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.”

Click for Larger View

Click for Larger View

One of the major points is that the portrait in question, showing a “fourth man” dressed as a Roman and meant to signify the poet who wrote Venus and Adonis (1593) by “William Shakespeare,” does not (necessarily) resemble the physical appearance of any real person.  Instead the portrait points symbolically to “Shakespeare” while other evidence, biographical and historical, connects it to Edward de Vere.  Here is the relevant part of the comment from Joanne Mary Gray at the Marketing and Communications Department of the University of Toledo:

“I agree with Mark Griffiths that the lower right hand drawing on the Gerard’s Herball title-page is that of the author ‘Shakespeare’ theatrically portraying a character.  I also believe this drawing is based on the real Shakespeare, Edward de Vere.

“The bays around his head indicate he is a poet. The flower in his right hand (to our left) is a ‘snakes’ head fritillary’ and it does point to the author Shakespeare and his first signed poem of Venus and Adonis.  [From the blood of Adonis on the ground, ‘A purple flower sprung up, checkered with white’ (1168), to whom Venus says, ‘Here was thy father’s bed, here in my breast;/ Thou art the next of blood, and ’tis thy right.’ (1183-84)]  Mr. Griffiths is correct.  I think that the other figures are also shown as ‘theatrical’ character portrayals—such as Lord Burghley as King Solomon.

“Some people have voiced concern/confusion as to why the fourth man in the far right corner, believed to be the author, would be holding an ear of corn in his other hand.  The corn actually clinches the identity of the fourth-man portrayal as Adonis, because Ovid in his Metamorphoses (Book X) has King Cinyras and his daughter Myrrha in an incestuous encounter during the festival of Ceres, the Corn Goddess, and that encounter resulted in her giving birth to Adonis.

(C)Guy Ackermans 2005 "The corn clinches the identity as Adonis, conceived during the Festival of the Corn Goddess."

(C)Guy Ackermans 2005
“The corn clinches the identity as Adonis, conceived during the Festival of the Corn Goddess.”

“I felt a bit sorry for Mr. Mark Griffiths, who as a loyal Stratfordian honestly had no idea how the other half (anti-Stratfordians) are treated on a regular basis whenever they find or point out something that in any way threatens or questions the orthodox faith.  Oxfordians were as unamazed as Mr. Griffiths was amazed by the immediate snap-back from the orthodox side when he rolled out his new Shakespeare find.

Ceres - Goddess and Mother of Corn

Ceres – Goddess and Mother of Corn

“It might be interesting to write an alternative-universe story about what would have happened if he had vetted it first through the Stratford Birthplace Trust.  I have to think that had he done that, there would have been a far different roll-out that would have only taken place once he had a supposition that could hold a bridge (no matter how meager) to Lord Burghley — because there is no way they wouldn’t have seen all the blinking red lights screaming ‘danger’ at the close proximity between the fourth man as ‘Shakespeare’ and Lord Burghley across each other on the same page!”

[Of course, Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford and William Cecil Lord Burghley are directly tied to each other.  Oxford was a royal ward in Cecil’s custody — living at Cecil House during the 1560s, when his uncle Arthur Golding would have been translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses! — and then marrying his daughter Anne Cecil.]

“Griffiths had naively believed that when he presented what he had honestly discovered, his fellow Shakespearean brethren would embrace him; instead he found himself immediately attacked by the Stratford orthodoxy, and found his only allies among the infidels outside the Stratford temple.

“No Oxfordian was surprised to see on May 22nd an updated article on the Country Life online site, in which Mr. Griffiths gave his full-throated self-defense and no-holds-barred damnation of the Oxfordians and Edward de Vere.  The heat came from his sincere bid to regain entrance among the faithful. He made his case:

“‘It is impossible that the Fourth Man standing gloriously opposite Burghley on the 1597 title page of The Herball is his hated and estranged son-in-law, the Earl of Oxford. In any case, this realistically portrayed figure doesn’t resemble the known portraits of Oxford, and he certainly doesn’t look like a hard-living 47-year-old, which the Earl was in 1597.’”

http://www.countrylife.co.uk/features/the-true-face-of-shakespeare-why-the-fourth-man-cant-be-anybody-but-shakespeare-72456#OQmpMehqhIEtWUGM.99

“It appears that after finding himself somewhere he never imagined, his panic led him to forget that his premise was that the figures were theatrically portraying characters. The character that Shakespeare was portraying was Adonis—the eternally handsome youth. [And the ‘father’ of the purple-and-white checkered flower.] It didn’t matter the age of the real model—be he ‘a hard-living 47-year-old” [Oxford] or a 33-year-old businessman [Shakspere] from Stratford!

“Griffiths also made the unfortunate remark about the ‘realistically portrayed figure’ — an obvious exaggeration that came, no doubt, because of his shock and the belief that he needed to push back forcefully. The drawings are no more realistic than Lord Burghley’s is.  And the last part of his comment, that he (de Vere) ‘doesn’t resemble the known portraits of Oxford,’ is a bit embarrassing for him, because the Stratford side says that both the Droeshout (an obvious caricature) and the present last iteration of the Stratford monument effigy are the only ‘authentic’ portrayals of the author.  I’ll put de Vere’s portraits up against those two ‘portraits’ any day to stand in comparison to the Herball title-page drawing.

“So the artist would not have portrayed Edward de Vere as the 47-year-old, but as the more youthful man he was, as Adonis; and no Oxfordian will be surprised to learn that in the final and longest denunciation in this updated May 22nd article — after dealing with the two lesser candidates that people had brought up for the fourth man, Raleigh and Drake — Griffiths saved the longest (60 lines) and harshest (to put it mildly) ending to the piece (building to a crescendo of truly biblical denunciation, to prove his bona fides as true member of the Stratford church) for Oxford — sealing it with: ‘Far from proving the theory that the Earl wrote Shakespeare’s canon, my discoveries kill it once and for all.’

[ http://www.countrylife.co.uk/features/the-true-face-of-shakespeare-why-the-fourth-man-cant-be-anybody-but-shakespeare-72456#JBDWvGbLPr3h3RUm.99 ]

“He is pleading to be readmitted to the temple because he will manage to accomplish what all before him have failed to achieve. He will kill, once and for all, that cursed Oxford heresy and all its pesky and persistent heretics and their unworthy candidate.”

Thanks to Joanne Gray for these lively and insightful remarks.  Stay tuned for more on this one!

Published in: on June 19, 2015 at 10:08 am  Comments (9)  
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No. 100 of 100 Reasons for the Earl of Oxford’s Authorship of the Shakespeare Works: How It Began by Searching for a Special Kind of Genius and Finding the Conditions Fulfilled

This one hundredth reason for Edward de Vere’s authorship of the Shakespeare works is by no means the end; on the contrary, it takes us back to the beginning – to the characteristics and conditions required even by the “genius” of that great author. It takes us back to the “long foreground” of earlier development that “Shakespeare” needed before he was able to complete his masterworks such as Hamlet and The Sonnets.

Oxford tan

“We venture to say that, whatever course the discussion may take, either now or in a distant future, one of the most serious hindrances to the formation of correct views will be the necessity of reversing judgments that have had a longstanding social sanction,” J. Thomas Looney wrote in “Shakespeare” Identified (1920), wherein he revealed his finding of Edward, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) as the most likely author.

“We shall first have to dissociate from the writings the conception of such an author as the steady, complacent, business-like man-of-the-world suggested by the Stratford Shakspere. Then there will be the more arduous task of raising to a most exalted position the name and personality possibly of some obscure man hitherto regarded as quite unequal to the work with which he is at last to be credited. And this will further compel us to re-read our greatest national classics from a totally new personal standpoint.”

Looney book

His prediction continues to carry enormous implications for the authorship question in general and the Oxfordian movement in particular. The task of turning our perception of the works “inside-out” is even now still in its infancy, even with the centennial of the publication of Looney’s groundbreaking work due to arrive in 2020 — and even with the thirtieth anniversary this year of the publication in 1984 of The Mysterious William Shakespeare by Charlton Ogburn, Jr., which ignited interest in the authorship question among many who had never known it existed.

“The work in question being the highest literary product of the age,” he continued, “it cannot be otherwise than that the author, whoever he may have been, when he is discovered must seem in some measure below the requirements of the situation; unequal, that is, to the production of such work. We shall therefore be called upon in his case radically to modify and correct a judgment of three hundred [make that four hundred] years’ standing.”

But there is a “natural limit” to such inferiority in appearance, Looney noted. Given that the writings attributed to “Shakespeare” are masterpieces of English literature, and that all the world’s other literary masterpieces were produced by those who wrote of “matters in which they were keenly interested, and to whom writing (or the mental occupation of composing) has been a master passion, we are entitled to require – in the person put forward as the author – a body of credentials corresponding to the character of the work.

John Thomas Looney 1870 - 1944

John Thomas Looney
1870 – 1944

“That is to say, we are bound to assume that the writer was an Englishman with dominating literary tastes, to whom the classical literature of the world, the history of England during the period of the Lancastrians and Yorkists, and Italian literature, which form the staple materials of his work, were matters of absorbing interest, furnishing the milieu in which his mind habitually worked …

“Unless, then, we are to recast all our ideas of how the great things of literature have been achieved, we cannot think of him otherwise than as one who had been swept by the irresistible force of his own genius into the strong literary current of his times.” Even if he hid from the men of his day the fact that he was himself busy producing such works, it is “inconceivable that he should have hidden from them where his chief interest lay.”

Charlton Ogburn Jr. 1911 - 1998

Charlton Ogburn Jr.
1911 – 1998

When the British schoolmaster came upon a summary of Edward de Vere’s life by Shakespeare editor and biographer Sir Sidney Lee, in the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) for 1885-1900, he was amazed and gratified by what he found. Looney had been searching for someone who was (1) a matured man of recognized genius, (2) apparently eccentric and mysterious, (3) of intense sensibility – a man apart, (4) unconventional, (5) not adequately appreciated, (6) of pronounced and known literary tastes, (7) an enthusiast in the world of drama, (8) a lyric poet of recognized talent and (9) of superior education – classical – the habitual associate of educated people.

More specifically he had been looking for (1) a man with feudal connections, (2) a member of the higher aristocracy, (3) someone connected with Lancastrian supporters, (4) an enthusiast for Italy, (5) a follower of sport – including falconry, (7) a lover of music, (8) a man loose and improvident in money matters, (8) a man who was doubtful and somewhat conflicting in his attitude to women and (9) someone of probable Catholic leanings, but touched with skepticism.

Lee’s article on Oxford quickly mentioned that his uncle Arthur Golding (“the translator of Ovid,” Shakespeare’s favorite classical source) acted as his tutor and receiver of property while the young earl lived at Cecil House as the Queen’s first royal ward. Lee noted Oxford’s studies at Cambridge and that one of his tutors was Bartholomew Clerke (Latin translator of The Courtier, sponsored by Oxford in 1572 and a major source of Hamlet).

Mysterious William Shakespeare

“He was thoroughly grounded in French and Latin,” Lee wrote of Edward de Vere, “but at the same time learnt to dance, ride, and shoot. While manifesting a natural taste for music and literature, the youth developed a waywardness of temper which led him into every form of extravagance, and into violent quarrels with other members of his guardian’s [William Cecil’s] household…

“[Cecil, Lord Burghley] found his perverse humor a source of grave embarrassment” but “found in the earl ‘more understanding than any stranger to him would think’ … ‘My Lord of Oxford,’ wrote Gilbert Talbot to his father, the Earl of Shrewsbury, on 11 May 1573, ‘is lately grown into great credit, for the queen’s Majesty delighteth more in his personage, and his dancing and valiantness, than any other … If it were not for his fickle head, he would pass any of them shortly’ …

“In 1575 Oxford realized his ambition of foreign travel, and … made his way to Italy. In October he reached Venice by way of Milan. He returned home laden with luxurious articles of dress and of the toilet. To him is assigned the credit of first introducing from Italy into this country embroidered gloves, sweet-bags, perfumed leather jerkins, and costly washes or perfumes. He ingratiated himself with the queen by presenting her with a pair of perfumed gloves trimmed with tufts or roses of colored silk…

“Oxford’s eccentricities and irregularities of temper grew with his years … In September 1579 he grossly insulted Sir Philip Sidney in the tennis court at Whitehall by calling him a ‘puppy’ … In 1581 he received from the queen’s hand a prize for the prowess that he displayed in a grand tilt at court…

sban300

“In March 1581 his violence involved him in new difficulties … He engaged in a duel with Thomas Knyvet, a gentleman of the privy chamber. Both were wounded, the earl dangerously … In October 1586 he was appointed special commissioner for the trial of Mary Queen of Scots … In 1588 he joined, as a volunteer, the fleet which repelled the Spanish armada…

“During these years Oxford’s continued extravagance involved him in pecuniary difficulties … He had squandered some part of his fortune upon men of letters whose bohemian mode of life attracted him. He was patron of a company of players [actually two companies, along with a troupe of musicians] …

“Oxford, despite his violent temper and perverse temper, his eccentric taste in dress, and his reckless waste of his substance, evinced a genuine interest in music, and wrote verse of much lyric beauty. Puttenham and Meres reckon him among ‘the best for comedy’ in his day; but, although he was a patron of a company of players, no specimens of his dramatic productions survive.”

How could all his writings for the stage have disappeared? The answer from here is that his plays written during the 1570s and 1580s were never “lost” – instead he revised them for later release under new titles as written by “Shakespeare,” a pen name adopted in 1593. Those early plays are part of the “long foreground” that has always been missing from traditional Stratfordian biography; and they supply the answer to the objection that many of the plays were written after Oxford’s reported death in 1604 – a conclusion dictated by the need to give the traditional author more time to (supposedly) write the works, while Oxford would have composed the first versions way back when Shakspere was still a boy.

“A sufficient number of his poems is extant, however, to corroborate Webbe’s comment that he was the best of the courtier-poets in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, and that ‘in the rare devices of poetry, he may challenge to himself the title of the most excellent among the rest…

“Verses by Oxford ‘To the Reader,’ together with a prefatory letter from the earl’s pen to the translator, were prefixed to Bedingfield’s translation of Cardanus’s Comfort, 1573, which was ‘published by commandment if the right honorable the Earl of Oxenford’ …

“Among men of letters who acknowledged Oxford’s patronage the chief were John Lyly, who dedicated to him Euphues and his England (1580), and Edmund Spenser, who addressed a sonnet to him in the opening pages of his Faerie Queen (1590). Of books of smaller account that were dedicated to him mention may be made of the translation of Justinus’s abridgment of Trogus Pompeius by his uncle, Arthur Golding (1564), Underdown’s rendering of Heliodorus (1569), Thomas Twine’s translation of Humphrey Lhuyd’s Breviary of Britain (1573), Anthony Munday’s Galien of France (1579? Lost), Zelauto (1580) and Palmerin d’Olivia (1588), Southern’s Diana (1584) and John Farmer’s song-books (1591, 1599).”

“I venture to say,” Looney wrote, “that if only such of those terms as are here used [in Lee’s article on Oxford] to describe the character and quality of his work were submitted without name or leading epithet, to people who only understood them to apply to some Elizabethan poet, it would be assumed immediately that Shakespeare was meant.”

scientific american

What scientists today are learning about “genius” applies to Oxford in the strongest possible ways; for example, here are statements in two current magazines focusing on the topic:

“Let us challenge the basic assumption that the individual creator is the only critical component of the creative process. Indeed, let us consider the possibility that groups play an essential role in creativity … We concluded that it is problematic and unhelpful to separate the creativity of individual minds from the communities in which they flourish.” – Scientific American, July/August 2014

atlantic

“For centuries, the myth of the lone genius has towered over us, its shadow obscuring the way creative work really gets done. The Lennon-McCartney partnership reveals just how misleading that myth can be, because John and Paul were so obviously more creative as a pair than as individuals … The essence of their achievements, it turns out, was relational.” – The Atlantic, July/August 2014

Oxfordians agree that “Shakespeare” was a genius, but we also know he was bound by the natural laws of humankind. We know that any inherited capacity of intellect or talent, especially on the part of one who writes masterworks, is a seed that requires nurturing soil and other elements to ensure its life and growth to full maturity.

From birth onward Oxford found himself in circumstances and relationships that “Shakespeare,” whoever he was, needed in order to flourish as he did:
• He had access to enormous amounts of information and a vast array of sources;
• He was placed in extremely competitive situations;
• He was motivated by the vibrant female monarch who claimed him as her first royal ward and then as her highest-ranking earl;
• He built up resentments over hypocrisies and lies perpetrated by other members of the court, fueling his devotion to [indirectly] revealing the truth about them;
• Reflecting the conclusions of current scientific studies, he was stimulated by collaborative relationships with scholars and musicians, writers and actors, on and on…

No one emerges from the womb intimately familiar with Italy, music, botany, seamanship and medicine, not to mention Venetian law. Such knowledge cannot be “imagined” out of whole cloth; it must be absorbed by the artists before he or she can use it creatively. The author of Hamlet used his own vast storehouse of facts with consummate ease, spontaneously, even joyously, as it flowed out of his mind and heart in service of higher purpose.

And for Oxford that purpose was eventually driven by the knowledge that powerful forces were determined to eradicate him from the record. “My name be buried where my body is,” he forecast in Sonnet 72, writing now as an act of survival, if only for generations in the future. “Your name from hence immortal life shall have,” he told the younger Earl of Southampton in Sonnet 81, “though I, once gone, to all the world must die.”

Those personal predictions by the great author could never be made by the traditionally perceived author known as Shakespeare – a writer’s name that is surely among the most popular and enduring that the world has known. So hereby submitted are these first 100 reasons why the man behind that illustrious name was a proud, eccentric, unpredictable, misunderstood, complicated, Hamlet-like nobleman who died lamenting his “wounded name” and asking his trusted friend, Horatio, to “report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied.”

Which brings us back to the beginning, to Reason No. 1, posted on February 23, 2011, nearly three and a half years ago, under a headline proclaiming that “Oxford, like Hamlet, was involved with Plays and Play Companies at the Royal Court.”

Once again, let us begin …

Published in: on August 6, 2014 at 10:36 pm  Comments (20)  
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