If “Shakespeare” lived in our own time, he would likely have been not only a poet, playwright and novelist, but also a screenwriter and director on a grand scale, similar to modern greats such as David Lean or Steven Spielberg. He would have seized the chance to make the most of advances in the technology and art of filmmaking.
Warwick Castle
When Oxford emerges from the shadows of history, the curtain will rise on not only the hidden genius who adopted the pen name “Shakespeare” at age forty-three in 1593, but also on the great impresario who, unknown to the public, was the primary force behind the extraordinary pageant of entertainments for Queen Elizabeth and her royal court.
In the summer of 1572 at Warwick Castle, an elaborate “show” was presented in the form of a mock military battle between two armies, one under Oxford’s command, according to a contemporary chronicler:
Cover of “The Queen’s Progress: An Elizabethan Alphabet” by Celeste Davidson Mannis
“Be it remembered that in the year of Our Lord 1572, and in the fourteenth year of our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth, the twelfth day of August in the said year, it pleased our said Sovereign Lady to visit this borough of Warwick in person…”
On her royal progress with the court, she arrived in great splendor as all the chief citizens knelt outside the town to greet her: “Her Majesty in her coach, accompanied with the Lady of Warwick in the same coach … the Lord Burghley, lately made Lord Treasurer of England, the Earl of Sussex, lately made Lord Chamberlain to Her Majesty, the Lord Howard of Effingham, lately made Lord Privy Seal, the Earl of Oxford Lord Great Chamberlain of England…”
By now Oxford’s close friends Sussex and Charles Howard, Earl of Effingham were in charge of ensuring that plays were brought to court, a duty they would carry out until Sussex’s death in 1583.
The queen spent a week in the Warwick area and on Sunday the 18th of August “it pleased her to have the country people resorting to see her dance in the Court of the Castle … which thing, as it pleased well the country people, so it seemed Her Majesty was much delighted and made very merry.”
In the evening after supper came the mock battle, which, among other things, was an exercise in theatrical realism.
Elizabeth and the court first saw a fort, commanded by Fulke Greville, “made of slender timber covered with canvas.” Inside were “divers persons to serve the soldiers; and therefore so many harnesses as might be gotten within the town … wherewith men were armed and appointed to cast out fireworks, [such as] squibs and balls of fire.
Fulke Greville (1554-1628)
“Against that fort was another castle-wise prepared of like strength, whereof was governor the Earl of Oxford, a lusty gentleman, with a lusty band of gentlemen.
“Between these forts, or against them, were placed certain battering pieces, to the number of twelve or fourteen, brought from London, and twelve fair chambers, or mortar pieces, brought also from the Tower … These pieces and chambers were by trains fired, and so made a great noise, as though it had been a sore assault …
Arquebus or Harquebus
“The Earl of Oxford and his soldiers, to the number of two hundred, with calivers and arquebusses [muskets], likewise gave divers assaults; they in the fort shooting again, and casting out divers fires, terrible to those that have not been in like experiences, valiant to such as delighted therein, and indeed strange to them that understood it not.
“For the wild fire falling into the river Avon would for a time lie still, and then again rise and fly abroad, casting forth many flashes and flames, whereat the Queen’s Majesty took great pleasure…
“At the last, when it was appointed that the over-throwing of the fort should be, a dragon flying, casting out huge flames and squibs, lighted up the fort, and so set fire thereon, to the subversion thereof; but whether by negligence or otherwise, it happened that a ball of fire fell on a house at the end of the bridge…
An engraving of Warwick Castle, 1729
“And no small marvel it was that so little harm was done, for the fire balls and squibs cast up did fly quite over the Castle, and into the midst of the town; falling down some on the houses, some in courts … and some in the street … Four houses in the town and suburbs were on fire at once, whereof one had a ball come through both sides, and made a hole as big as a man’s head, and did no more harm.”
A man and his wife were sleeping in the house hit with the fireball, so Oxford and Greville ran over to help. After some difficulty, they rescued the couple; the next morning the queen and her courtiers gave the man more than 25 pounds to cover the damage.
Such high drama on a grand scale is exactly what we might expect to find “Shakespeare” creating as a young man, more than two decades before his adoption of that pen name. We might well expect to find that, in addition to becoming the greatest writer of the English language, the poet-dramatist was also a master showman.
[The contemporary chronicle was in Black Book of Warwick, printed in Bibliotecha Topographica Britannica, vol. iv., and reprinte by B. M. Ward in his 1928 biography The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, 1550-1604, From Contemporary Documents.]
This blog post, appearing here as edited by Alex McNeil, is now number 3 in 100 Reasons Shake-speare was the Earl of Oxford.
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