31.EDWARD DE VERE
better known as
"WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE"
1550 - 1604.
The great British
playwright and poet, William Shakespeare, is generally acknowledged to be the
greatest writer who ever lived. There is a good deal of dispute about his
identity (which will be discussed below), but the talent and achievements of
the author are agreed to by all.
Shakespeare wrote
at least thirty-six plays, including such masterpieces as Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius
Caesar, and Othello, a magnificent set of 154 sonnets, and a few longer poems. In view of his genius,
accomplishments, and deserved fame, it may
seem a bit odd that his name does not appear higher on this list. I have ranked
Shakespeare this low not because I am unappreciative of his artistic accomplishments,
but only because of my belief that, in general, literary and artistic
figures have had comparatively little
influence on human history.
The activities of
a religious leader, scientist, politician, explorer, or philosopher frequently
influence developments in many other fields of human endeavor. For example,
scientific advances have
had tremendous impact upon economic and political affairs, and have also affected religious beliefs, philosophical attitudes, and developments in art.
had tremendous impact upon economic and political affairs, and have also affected religious beliefs, philosophical attitudes, and developments in art.
However, a famous painter, though he may have a great deal
of influence upon the work of
subsequent painters, is likely to have very
little influence upon the development of music and literature, and virtually none upon science, exploration, or
other fields of
Why, then, are there any artistic figures on this list? One answer is that our
general culture in the sociological sense is in part created by art. Art helps
to form the connective glue of society. It is no accident that art is a feature
of every human civilization that has ever existed.
Furthermore,
the enjoyment of art plays a direct part in the life of each individual person.
In other words, an individual may spend part of his time reading books, part of
his time looking at paintings, etc. Even if the time we spent listening to music
had no effect whatsoever upon our other activities that time would still
represent some not insignificant fraction of our lives. However, art does affect our other activities, and in some sense our whole
life. Art connects us to our souls; it expresses our deepest feelings and
validates them for us.
In some
cases, artistic works have a more or less explicit philosophical content, which can influence our
attitudes on other topics. This, of course, occurs more frequently in
the case of literary compositions than in
the case of music or paintings. For example, when in Romeo and Juliet (Act III, scene 1) Shakespeare has the prince say,
"Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill," an idea is presented
that (whether or not one accepts it) has obvious philosophical content, and is
more likely to influence political attitudes than is, say, viewing the
"Mona Lisa."
It seems
beyond dispute that Shakespeare is preeminent among all literary figures.
Relatively few people today read the works of Chaucer, Virgil, or
even Homer, except when those works are assigned reading in school. However, a performance of one of Shakespeare's plays is certain to be well attended. Shakespeare's gift for a well-turned phrase is without parallel, and he is frequently quoted even by persons who have never seen or read his
even Homer, except when those works are assigned reading in school. However, a performance of one of Shakespeare's plays is certain to be well attended. Shakespeare's gift for a well-turned phrase is without parallel, and he is frequently quoted even by persons who have never seen or read his
In assessing Shakespeare's
importance, one should take into account that had he not lived, his plays would
never have been written at all. (Of course, a corresponding statement could be
made regarding every artistic or literary figure, but that factor does not seem
particularly important in evaluating the influence of minor artists.)
Although Shakespeare wrote in
English, he is truly a world figure. If not quite a universal language, English
is closer to being one than any other language ever has been. Moreover, Shakespeare's
works have been very widely translated, and his works have been read and
performed in a very large number of countries.
There are, of course, some popular
authors whose writings are disdained by literary critics. Not so with
Shakespeare, whose works have received unstinting praise from literary
scholars. Generations of playwrights have studied his works and have attempted
to emulate his literary virtues. This combination of enormous influence on
other writers and continued worldwide popularity makes it plain that William
Shakespeare is entitled to a high position in this book. However, there has
long been a controversy as to the identity of the man who wrote under that
name.
The orthodox view (which I accepted
uncritically when writing the first edition of this book) is that he was the same person as William Shakspere, who was
born in Stratford on Avon in 1564 and died there in 1616. However, on
carefully evaluating the arguments of the skeptics and the counterarguments of
the orthodox, I have concluded that the skeptics have much the better of the
argument and have reasonably established their case.
The bulk of the evidence indicates
that "William Shakespeare" was a pseudonym used by Edward de Vere, the 17th
Earl of Oxford, and that William Shakespere (or Shaxpere, or Shakspeyr, or Shagspere, or
Shaxpere: the
family name was spelled several ways in
I am not
suggesting that de Vere was a ghostwriter for Shakespere, who took public
credit for the plays at the time. During his lifetime, Shakespere was not considered to be the author, nor did he ever claim to be!
The notion that Shakespere was the great playwright William Shakespeare did not
arise until 1623-seven years after Shakespere died!-when the First Folio edition
of Shakespeare's plays appeared. The editors of that hook included
some prefatory material in which it was strongly hinted (though never said
directly) that the man from Stratford-on-Avon was the author.
To
understand why it is so unlikely that Shakespere was the playwright it is first
necessary to present the orthodox version of his biography, which goes as
follows:
Shakespere's
father, John, had once been fairly prosperous, but he fell on hard times,
and young William was reared in difficult financial circumstances.
Nevertheless, he attended the Stratford Grammar School, where he studied Latin
and classical literature.
When
William was eighteen he made a young woman named Anne Hathaway pregnant. He
duly married her, and she gave birth a few months later. Two and one-half years
later she gave birth to twins: so William had a wife and three children to
support before he was twenty-one years old.
We have no knowledge of his
activities or whereabouts for the next six years, but in the early 1590s he was present in London as a member of an acting troup.
He was a successful actor, but soon branched
out into writing plays and poetry. By 1598 he was already
being hailed as the greatest of all English writers, living or dead. Shakespere
stayed in London for about twenty years, during which time he wrote at least thirty-six plays, 154 sonnets, and a few longer poems. Within a few years he became prosperous, and in 1597 was able to purchase an expensive home ("New Place")
in Stratford. His family remained behind in Stratford the whole time, but he
continued to support them.
Oddly, he
never published any of the great plays he was writing. But unscrupulous
printers, realizing their commercial value, published pirated editions of
nearly half of them. Although the pirated editions are often rather garbled,
Shakespere made no at-tempt to interfere.
About 1612, when he
was forty-eight years old, he suddenly retired from writing, returned to
Stratford, and resumed living with his wife. He died there in April 1616, and
was buried in the church courtyard. The
stone over his supposed grave does not bear his name; however, some time
later a monument was erected on the wall nearby. Three weeks before his death
he executed a will, leaving most of his property to his
elder daughter, Susanna. She and her descendants continued to live at New Place
until the last of them died, in 1670.
Hedingham Castle, the birthplace and childhood home of Edward de Vere.
It should be pointed out that a good
deal of the foregoing biography is pure conjecture on the part of orthodox
biographers. For example, there is no actual record of Shakespere ever being a
student at Stratford Grammar School. Nor did any student or teacher there ever
claim to have been a classmate or instructor of the famous playwright.
Similarly, it is unclear that he ever had an acting career.
Nevertheless, at first sight, the
official story may sound plausible. However, as soon as we examine it closely, grave difficulties arise.
The first problem-mentioned even by
many orthodox biographers is that we have so little information about the life
of Shakespere, very
much less than we would expect to
have about so prominent a person. In an attempt to explain this surprising paucity
of data people sometimes say, "He lived almost four hundred years ago.
Naturally most of the documents by and about him have been lost."
But that view greatly underestimates the amount of information we have about
the era Shakespere lived in.
He was not living in a backward
country or a barbaric age, but in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
a well documented era where there were printing presses, where writing materials
were commonplace, and where very many persons knew how to read and write. Of
course, many papers have been lost; but several million original documents from that era still survive.
Because of the great interest in
William Shakespeare, an army of scholars has spent three generations scouring
that data, searching for information about the world's most
renowned literary genius. As a by-product of that search they have uncovered
reams of information about every other major poet of the day-and about many
minor poets as well. But all they have uncovered about Shakespeare are about
three dozen minor references, not one of which describes him as a poet or
playwright!
We know incomparably more about the
lives of Francis Bacon, Queen Elizabeth, Ben Jonson, or Edmund Spencer than we
do about Shakespere's life. Indeed, we know far more about even such
a minor poet as John Lyly than we do of Shakespere.
The contrast with Isaac
Newton-history's foremost scientific
A related
problem is the fact that during his years in London the great playwright was
virtually invisible. Shakespere is supposed to have spent roughly twenty years
in London (1592-1612). But we cannot find a single record,
during that whole twenty-year stretch, of anyone seeing the great actor and
playwright in the flesh. When people saw the famous actor Richard Burbage or
met the play wright Ben Jonson, they marked it down as a notable event. But if
anyone in London, during the whole twenty years of his greatest prominence, saw
Shakespere on stage, or discussed poetry with him, or corresponded with him, or
met him at a party or on the street, they did not think the encounter worthy of
mention!
The only plausible explanation for
the above facts is that the name "William Shakespeare" was
a pseudonym used by the author in a successful attempt to keep his identity
secret, and that those persons who did meet the author therefore did not know
they were meeting the great William Shakespeare. (Obviously, Shakespere, whose
name was so similar, could not have successfully hidden behind such a
pen-name.)
Perhaps
an even graver difficulty with the official story is the attitude towards
Shakespere in Stratford on Avon. Though Shakespere is supposed to have been the
greatest writer in England-and a well-known actor to boot nobody in his home
town seemed to be aware that he was a famous
man, nor that there was anything unusual about him! This is even more
amazing when one recalls that he was poor when he left Stratford and wealthy
when he returned, a change which would naturally tend to make friends and
neighbors curious. Yet the fact is that during his lifetime, not one of his friends, or
neighbors in Stratford-not even his
own
family!-ever referred to Shakespere as an actor, a
playwright, a poet, or a literary figure of any sort!
Well,
what about the manuscripts of the plays in Shakespere's own handwriting? Surely
they prove that he was the author. Unfortunately, there are no manuscripts of the plays in his handwriting, or any early drafts, or any fragments, or any
unpublished or unfinished works. In fact, aside from six signatures on legal documents, there is NOTHING in his handwriting! No notes, no notebooks, no
memoranda, no diaries. Not a single personal letter by him survives, nor a
single business letter. (Nor do even his earliest biographers report having
seen a single line in his handwriting.) Judging from the record, it appears
that Shakespeare, far from being an author, was barely literate, or even
illiterate!
A related
point is that Shakespeare's parents, wife, and children were all
illiterate. Now a man does not choose his parents, and he might select a mate
for reasons other than her reading ability but it seems scarcely believable
that a man to whom the written word meant so much would allow his own daughters
to grow up unable to read and write. If Shakespeare was indeed Shakespeare, then
he is the only prominent author in history whose children are known to
have been illiterate!
Then there is the question of Shakespeare's will. The original document survives: it is three pages long, and
lists his property in considerable detail, with many specific bequests. Nowhere
does it mention any poems, any plays, any manuscripts, any works in progress,
or any literary rights. Nor does it make mention of any personal books or
papers. There is no hint that he would like to see his remaining plays published (although at least twenty of them
had not yet appeared in print), or that he had ever written a play or poem in his life. It is the will of an
unschooled, possibly illiterate, merchant.
We might
also note that, in an era when the English poets typically arranged gaudy
funerals and composed lengthy poetic eulogies when one of their members died,
the death of Shakespeare in 1616 went completely unmentioned by every writer in
England. Not even Ben Jonson-who later claimed to have been a great admirer and
friend of William Shakespeare-expressed the slight
Letter written (in French) by Edward de Vere when he was 13 years old.
To my mind, the foregoing arguments
are already conclusive, and no further proof is needed that Shakespere was not
the playwright and that "William Shakespeare" was a pseudonym used
to conceal the true author's identity. However, there are additional strong
arguments against Shakespere being the author, although their persuasiveness is
not crucial to the case against him.
For example, it has been pointed out that most dramatists
and writers of fiction include in their
writings many incidents from their own lives. (Often, such events form a major
part of the story.) But the plays of Shakespeare are virtually devoid of any
incidents or circumstances which can be traced back to Shakespere's own
experiences.
Another
argument is that the author, William Shakespeare, was obviously an extremely
well educated man; witness his enormous vocabulary (much larger than that of any other playwright), his familiarity
with both Latin and French, his accurate knowledge of legal terminology, and
his voluminous knowledge of classical literature. But everyone agrees that
Shakespere never attended a university, and (as explained above) it is doubtful
whether he even attended grammar school.
Still
another point is that Shakespeare (the author) seems to be of aristocratic
sympathies and background, very familiar with the
sports of the aristocracy (such as fox-hunting and falconry) and
familiar with court life and court intrigues. Shakespere, on the other hand,
came from a small town and had a petit bourgeois back-ground.
There are many other aspects of the
life of Shakespere that do not fit in with the hypothesis that he was the famous
author, William Shakespeare, and I could easily write many pages describing
additional difficulties with that theory. (The reader who wants more details
can find them in the excellent book, The Mysterious William Shakespeare, by
Charlton Ogburn.) Of course, orthodox
For example, it is possible-although
people tend to save letters that they receive from famous men-that by the merest coincidence every personal or business letter that Shakespeare ever wrote has vanished without a trace, together with all
his notes, notebooks, and manuscripts. It is possible that the greatest of English poets composed for his own
epitaph the childish piece of doggerel that we see on Shakspere's
gravestone. It is possible
that a man whose plays show that he
admired intelligent, educated women let his own daughters grow up illiterate.
And it is possible
that, although Shakespere was the most
celebrated writer in England, not a single one of his friends, family; or
neighbors in Stratford ever referred to him as an actor, poet, or playwright.
It's not very likely, but it's possible!
However, in this case, as in most,
the whole is greater than any of its parts. Were there just one or two
difficulties with the official story, we might accept even rather far-fetched
explanations for them. But after a while we can't help noticing that nothing seems to fit the official story naturally. Everything
about that story seems to require an ad hoc, and often far-fetched,
explanation. The problem is that William Shakespere of Stratford-on-Avon was a
barely literate small-town merchant, and neither his education, not his
character, nor his actions, nor what his family and neighbors said about him, are
consistent with his being the great author, William Shakespeare.
Well, if Shakespere was not the author
of the plays, who was? Many other persons have been suggested, of which the
best known is the famous philosopher Francis Bacon. But in recent years, the
accumulation of evidence has swung opinion strongly towards Ed-ward de Vere.
We know a lot about Edward de Vere: he led an adventurous
life, and many events in his life are mirrored in the plays. He was
His father died when Edward was only
twelve, and his mother subsequently remarried. However, Edward did not remain
with his mother for long. Instead, he became a royal ward, and a guardian was appointed for him. The guardian chosen was William Cecil, Lord Treasurer of
England, and a member of Queen Elizabeth's privy council for many
years. As the Queen's oldest and most trusted adviser, Cecil was one
of the most powerful men in En-gland.
Young de Vere,
as befitted his high rank, was treated as a family member in Cecil's household. (A somewhat
mysterious incident, in which he killed one of Cecil's servants, was kept out
of the courts due to Cecil's influence.) In his late teens he was introduced to
Court, where he met all the leading figures, including the Queen herself. She
was much taken with the young man who, in addition to being brilliant,
athletic, and charming, was also very good-looking, and he soon became a
favorite of hers.
When he was twenty-one, de Vere
married Anne Cecil, his guardian's daughter. Since they had been
reared together, and she was almost his
"kid sister," such a marriage was quite unusual. (But
Post humus Leonatus, the hero of Cymbeline, was
also a royal ward who married his guardian's daughter, and there are many other
resemblances between his story and de Vere's.)
When he
was twenty-four, de Vere embarked on a lengthy trip through Europe. He visited
France and Germany, spent about ten months in Italy, and then returned to
England via France. On the trip back across the English Channel his ship was
attacked by pirates, who planned to hold their captives for ransom. But de
Meanwhile, his wife Anne had given
birth to a daughter. Though the girl had been born only eight months after de
Vere left England, he insisted that the child was not his, and, claiming that
Anne was an adulteress, he refused to live with her. Most historians feel that
his charge was ill founded. Apparently de Vere eventually reached this
conclusion also, as after a five-year separation he dropped his charges and
resumed living with Anne. (False charges of the adultery of a blameless young
wife are a common theme in Shakespeare's plays. For example: All's Well That Ends Well, Cymbeline, The Winter's
Tale, and Othello. And in every
case the grievously wronged wife forgives
her husband.)
During the five-year separation from
his wife, de Vere had an affair with a court lady, which resulted in her
pregnancy. Queen Elizabeth, angered at this, had de Vere arrested and sent to
the Tower of London. He was released after a few months; but a friend of the
young woman, resentful of de Vere's actions, attacked him, and de
Vere was badly injured. Street brawls between the two families continued for a
while, until the Queen threatened to jail them all unless the fighting stopped.
(Reminds one of Romeo
and Juliet.)
After de Vere resumed living with his
wife, they had five children together. Then Anne, still only thirty-two years
old, died suddenly. Four years later de Vere remarried, and his second wife
outlived him.
Meanwhile, de Vere's
financial affairs-which had been in bad shape, due to his spendthrift
habits-had improved radically. In 1586, when de Vere was thirty-six years old,
Queen Elizabeth granted him a lifetime
pension in the extraordinary amount of 1,000 pounds a year. That is
equivalent to about $100,000 a year today, tax-free! A remarkable sum,
especially considering that Elizabeth was notoriously tight fisted with money!
Curiously, the grant made no mention of any duties which de Vere must perform
in return, nor of any past services for which he was being rewarded. The
De Vere had always been intensely
interested in poetry and the theater, was friends with many literary figures,
and as a young man is known to have written poetry and plays in his own name.
(Those early plays have been lost, but several of the poems survive. Some of
them are quite good, though well below the standard of the mature William
Shakespeare.) However he did not publish any of them, due to the prevailing
notion that it was discreditable for an aristocrat to write poetry for
publication. (Such an attitude seems very peculiar nowadays; but historians
agree that such an attitude was common at the time, and that the taboo was
rarely violated.)
After the grant by Queen Elizabeth,
though, de Vere never wrote another line in his own name. But within a few
years, poems and plays started appearing by the invisible author "William
Shakespeare."
Why did Elizabeth grant this
extraordinarily generous pension to de Vere? Although no reason was ever
stated, the obvious explanation is that she like so many other monarchs before
her-was patronizing a talented artist in the hopes that his achievements would
glorify her reign. If that was her motive, she certainly got her money's
worth. Indeed, no ruler before or since seems to have made a better choice!
After being awarded the pension by
the Queen, the formerly very active Edward de Vere retired completely from
court life. Presumably, he spent the last eighteen years of his life writing
and revising the great plays and poetry that have made "William
Shakespeare" famous. He died in 1604, during an epidemic of the plague,
and was buried near his country home at Hackney, near the village of Stratford.
(There were two towns in England named Stratford; and at the time that one was
larger than Stratford-on-Avon.)
Unlike Shakespere-or any of the other
persons suggested as the author-Edward de Vere seems to fit perfectly the requirements for the mysterious William Shakespeare.
He had an excellent education, had
studied law, and was well-versed in foreign languages. (He certainly knew Latin
and French, and possibly other languages as well.)
He was an aristocrat, and had an insider's knowledge of
court life and court intrigue.
He had the large amount of free time necessary to compose
the plays.
He was repeatedly described by others
as brilliant and talented.
He had a
lifelong interest in the theater, and is known to have written poetry and plays
in his own name when he was younger. Indeed, he was specifically named, during his lifetime, as one of those noblemen who
had written poetry but (because of the taboo mentioned above) had not published
it under his own name. More-over, he was praised as the most skillful and
excellent of the gentle-men who had done so. (These descriptions are in
documents surviving from that era.)
The plays of William Shakespeare
contain a large number of incidents and characters which can be clearly
identified as relating to events, personalities, and situations in the life of
Edward de Vere. (A few of them have been noted above, but there are many
others.)
The only problem at all with
accepting de Vere as the author of the plays is the question: Why did he keep
his identity a secret? There are several possible explanations.
1)
There
was a strong taboo at that time against noblemen writing poetry for
publication, or plays for the commercial theater.
2)
De
Vere was known to be an insider at court. Since many of the plays dealt with
court life, if he admitted authorship people would naturally (and probably
correctly!) have assumed that various characters in the plays were intended as
insulting parodies of various real people in court. Today, such writing is
accepted as commonplace and, though hardly friendly, not a cause for action. By the standards of those days, however, it would
at least have been grounds for a lawsuit, and more likely for a duel. By
hiding his identity de Vere avoided such problems.
3)
Many of the sonnets of William Shakespeare are addressed
4) Far worse, many of the other sonnets are
addressed to a male, and
have often been interpreted as showing that the author was homosexual or
bisexual. Whether or not that interpretation is correct (and the majority of
critics believe it is not), admitting that he was the author of the sonnets
would have caused gossip that would have been very embarrassing to his family.
Perhaps no one of these answers is entirely
convincing by itself. Taken together, though, they might indeed be the full explanation for de Vere's concealing his identity. However, it is
certainly possible that he had additional reasons which we do not know of. (For
example, it is possible that, as a condition of the pension granted him,
Elizabeth had insisted that he follow the social norm sand avoid possible duels
between her courtiers by not publishing anything in his own name.)
Whether or not we know the full
explanation for de Vere's concealing his authorship, he matches the
requirements for Shakespeare perfectly in all other respects-and remember:
nobody else even comes close! To me, it seems virtually certain that he is the
author.
One final question: How did Shakespere
ever get to be considered the author of the plays? That belief seems to have
its origin in three references, each made a few years after Shakespere had died,
and each somewhat ambiguous. Unless an unusual coincidence is postulated, it
appears that someone (or ones) deliberately committed a hoax. Why was that
done, and by whom?
We cannot be certain of the answer to that
question; but the most likely explanation is that the hoax was perpetrated by
de Vere's family when they decided (about 1620) to have his
collected works published and chose to continue to keep his identity secret.
Their motives were probably quite similar to his: fear of scandal (and perhaps
other motives, such as a promise to the monarch). To make the deception more
complete, they decided to present an-other person as the author. Shakespere was
the obvious choice as the stand-in, because of the similarity of names. Also,
since he had been dead for several years he could not expose the fraud;
and since he was little known in London, and even less remembered, there were
very few others in town who would realize that the story was a hoax.
The deception was probably fairly
easy to carry out. Ben Jon-son, who provided a prefatory poem to the First
Folio edition, was persuaded to include a couple of ambiguous lines that
strongly hinted (without saying so directly, or telling any other flat-out
lies) that the author came from Stratford-on-Avon. They also arranged for a
monument to be erected there, near Shakespere's grave, with an
inscription which includes strong (though vague) words of praise. Since the
identity of William Shakespeare had always been kept a secret, a few hints that
he was the man from Stratford sufficed to get the story started. Nobody at the
time was very interested in checking the story carefully. (There was much less
interest in literary biography then than there is now.) By the time the first
biography of Shakespeare was written (by William Rowe: 1709) those who knew the
truth had long been dead, and the myth of Shakespere's authorship
long accepted.
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