A New “Shakespeare”

It’s been 85 years since J. Thomas Looney concocted the last new contender for the honor of being the “genuine” William Shakespeare: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (or “Oxenford”, as he called himself). Oxenford has become very popular among those who refuse to believe that a middle class lad with only a grammar school education could possibly have been a great poet and playwright. His ascendancy is rather puzzling, as he doesn’t fit the chronology of the plays very well (he was born half a generation too early and died before the generally accepted dates of a third of the Shakespearean works), and his 70-plus surviving letters and memoranda display not an iota of interest in literature or the theater. There is in some circles, however, such a strong will to disbelieve in the “Stratford Man” that this dubious alternative has a vocal following, productive of a stream of usually thick and always incoherent books arguing his cause.

Now Oxenford has a rival. An Englishwoman named Brenda James spent a spell of illness “deciphering” the dedication to the first edition Shakespeare’s Sonnets and discovered a secret message revealing that the true author was Sir Henry Neville (1561/2–1615), a diplomat, courtier and member of Parliament, best known for his fierce anti-Catholicism and fruitless place seeking, who has never, to my knowledge, been suggested before. Next month Miss James and William Rubenstein, a modern historian who wrote a run-of-the-mill anti-Stratfordian article for History Today a few years back, will publish The Truth Will Out”: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare, which will lay out the case for Neville as the Bard. A “Media Pack” is already available. It coyly refrains from stating the pretender’s identity, but anyone with access to the DNB can figure it out in minutes. Judging by the advance propaganda, the tome is no more impressive than its Oxenfordian counterparts, though thin in comparison at a mere 352 pages.

A list of “The Reasons for Doubting Shakespeare as the Author”, included in the Media Pack, leads off with the Bardolatry that underlies most anti-Stratfordianism. Will Shakespeare of Stratford “was not the profoundly learned man, able to read many languages and having knowledge of the political, economic and Court environment, demonstrated in the plays”. What’s more, we don’t know whether he ever traveled abroad, “so how did he know all the details [emphasis added] of European cities used as settings for some of the plays?” Thence it proceeds to ordinary misunderstandings and falsehoods. Among the former: “Being a penniless actor for much of his early life, he would not have had the time, congenial surroundings, materials, etc. needed for writing the Plays.” (The authors evidently had no time to peruse Bentley’s The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare’s Time, which might have disabused them of their rosy picture of the life of an Elizabethan playwright.) As for falsehoods (though I’m sure that ignorance rather than intentional deception is to blame): “The contemporary documents which mention Shakespeare the actor make no reference to his writing.” To the contrary are, off the top of my head, John Davies of Hereford’s epigram, “To Our English Terence, Mr. Will. Shake-speare” (1610), which puns on the author’s roles with the King’s Men, and the anonymous academic play, The Return to Parnassus, Part III (c. 1601), in which the famous actor Will Kemp refers to Shakespeare the playwright as “our fellow”.

Assuming arguendo that there were grounds for doubting the traditional attribution, why Henry Neville? It doesn’t raise one’s hopes to see that the discovery began with pseudo-cryptography. The less fantastical arguments are mostly generalities about his learning, wit, eloquence and interest in politics, such as might be said of hundreds of men whose adult lives fell roughly during the period when Shakespeare’s works were appearing. Only two items link Neville specifically to the plays.

First, we are told, “Brenda discovered a notebook, written by [Neville], which contains background notes to the Coronation scene in Henry VIII [IV:1]” and “was written 11 years before the play was performed”. Not having seen the notebook, I can’t speak to parallels between it and the play, but the coronation of Anne Boleyn as Henry’s second Queen was a major public event, not a Neville family secret. All the details in the play appear to be derived from Holinshed’s chronicle, a published work that one didn’t have to be a courtier to read.

Second, “As an officer in the second London Virginia Company, [Neville] would have seen the Strachey letter [generally regarded as a major source of The Tempest], kept confidential until 1625.” The Virginia Company was not, however, a secret society. Shakespeare of Stratford demonstrably knew several men with close connections to it, probably including Strachey himself. There is also little reason to believe that the letter was confidential. It is written in a form suggesting that the writer hoped to publish it, which would have been a motive for sending a copy to Shakespeare, whose family friends included Richard Field, one of London’s leading printers.

The great conundrum for anti-Stratfordians is, inevitably, why the secrecy? What reason did the True Author have for hiding behind a false name? The James/Rubinstein duo handles this question no more plausibly than the Oxenfordians:

There are several pressing reasons why he would have used a pseudonym:

• He shared his name with other eminent members of his family and wanted to avoid putting them in any danger through his writing.
• He was a well-known politician, ambitious for high office, and did not wish he name to be associated with the public stage.
• The History plays, about the violent overthrow of English kings, would have been viewed as seditious if his prominent court and political position were known.

However, a simple pseudonym could not provide adequate protection from the curious, and to ensure absolute anonymity he went one step further and employed William Shakespeare to stand in as the author of his works.

Shakespeare was, in many ways, the ideal ‘front man’. He was a distant kinsman, which would guarantee [sic] his loyalty, he was involved in theatre life both as an actor and a theatre proprietor, his social sphere didn’t normally cross with that of the ‘true author’ so there would be little reason to suspect the relationship between them.

If Shakespeare’s plays were politically subversive, as this hypothesis assumes, it’s strange that the actor and theater proprietor, as their ostensible author, never got into trouble over them. (Contrast the arrest orders issued against Ben Jonson and Thomas Nashe for The Isle of Dogs and Thomas Middleton for A Game at Chess.) Henry Neville, never more than a minor figure at Court, certainly lacked the clout to protect his “front man”. Thus, as usually happens at this point in anti-Stratfordian reveries, the “solution” to one riddle casts up another, yet more perplexing. One also wonders, given the True Author’s quest for “absolute anonymity”, why the dedication to the Sonnets would disclose his name (or were contemporary readers assumed to be so much dumber than Brenda James?). Nor are we told, though perhaps this matter has been saved for the book, why the imposture was kept up in the First Folio, published when both Neville and Shakespeare were dead.

Assuming that the publisher isn’t holding back blockbuster evidence, this new candidate looks no better than the old ones. He will most likely migrate to the anti-Stratfordian minor leagues, with Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland, Sir Edward Dyer and the like. Nonetheless, let us welcome the new pretender.

Update (10/5/05): The Times of London has an article on the Neville theory, amounting to little more than a condensed version of the “media pack”. It evinces not a scintilla of skepticism or sign of intellectual curiosity. Consider this tidbit:

In the history plays, Neville’s ancestors — for instance, Richard Nevil, the Earl of Warwick in Henry VI, Part II — are described with an accuracy that could have been written only by someone with Neville’s knowledge.

Does the writer, one “Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent”, have so little acquaintance with English history that she thinks that Warwick the Kingmaker was an obscure figure whose deeds were known only to his descendants? For that matter, are the book’s authors, one of whom is a modern historian of some note, that ignorant of the pre-modern era? And is “a leading academic publisher” so hard up for manuscripts, deficient in critical judgement or eager to separate gullible book buyers from their sterling that it will let such absurdities appear under its imprint? Perhaps we will soon see the currently self-published fantasies of Brame/Popova and Paul Streitz as Longman titles!

Update (10/6/05): Having run across a promotional piece by co-author Rubinstein, I dissect it (or, to be precise, its most interesting self-contradiction) in a separate post.

Update (1/19/06): Having now read the book, I have begun posting an analysis and critique.

Comments

[George Taylor]

The book "The Truth Will Out" got me interested in Shakespeare for the first time! Consequently I must have spent 500 hours reading around the subject, and considering other possibilities.

Top of my list of possibilities that help further explain what might have gone on is that Elizabeth had quite a number of children, which were placed by Cecil with families close to him or Elizabeth. (Henry VIII had a number of illegitimate children that were placed in noble families, as did other kings around Europe at that time, and in the 17th century. If they could do it, why couldn't she?)

Oxford was Elizabeth's first unplanned child, which she had when she was just 13 or 14. Oxford was given a very privileged education that included at least 6 months in Venice. He wrote the proto plays that his half brother (Shakespeare/Neville) with a similar education and Venetian experience rewrote a decade or two later. Bacon could have been one of Elizabeth's children, as well as Neville, Essex and Southampton. It sounds too farfetched? Read Shakespeare !!! They all had red hair, and faces similar to Elizabeth!

There were several reports that Elizabeth had children (some still exist in archives in places like Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam and Venice), that were understandably repressed by the whole machinery of state. When Elizabeth died at least three of her sons were still alive. "Shakespeare" put a lot of it in the plays. Reread King Lear, with everything turned upside down!

It is not surprising that it was totally surpressed - Cecil's son took over from Cecil senior - and kept his position under James until he died. Why did James keep him? There were a lot of secrets that needed to be kept locked down - and the plays were a way to get some of them out - and a good way of letting off steam - on behalf of all of the sons!!

Oxford was fathered by Seymour, the middle lot by Dudley, and Southampton by Oxford !!! - incest too. The end of Elizabeths life was miserable - she executed her favorite son, and put the next two favorites in the Tower. A very sad and miserable end to a glorious life.

When Queen Victoria was presented with the evidence of Elizabeths secret marriage in 1560, she is said to have thrown the evidence in the fire, saying "we must not mess with history" !!

I write this despite being a firm believer in the cock up theory of history. This particular coverup - the mother of all coverups - of Elizabeths children and "Shakespeare" - is the conspiracy that is the exception that proves the cockup theory of history!

You do not believe that Elizabeth could have had so many children? Neville had 11 that survived to adulthood, with one wife. It is very very hard not to have children if you like sex, and are fertile! Clearly I think Elizabeth liked sex and was fertile. Try throwing the dice yourself and work out the probability/possibility for yourself.

Having a son was hugely important in those days, because without one your line would end - so it was not too difficult for Cecil/Elizabeth to persuade well off couples without a male heir to take a healthy baby boy. Both parties has an interest in the arrangement being secret. There was no press in those days, no photography, no telephone, no email or internet. And every single last publication had to be passed by the censor, or you lost your head - and some did.

There are reports of Elizabeth and Dudley visiting Bacon when he was a young boy. I think Dudley adopted Essex - one of his sons by Elizabeth - when the original adoptive father died. Cecil took in Oxford when Oxford's father died, ditto Southampton.

After 4 years at Oxford Neville got sent abroad for FOUR years, aged 17, with his tutor Saville. Why so long? I reckon he had found out that his mother was Elizabeth and he had to be kept away until he could keep his mouth shut !!

Southampton was Neville's little brother - 10 years younger, born when Elizabeth was 40. It could well explain some of the passion in the Sonnets. One of my favorite paintings is of Southampton in the Tower, with his CAT !!

http://www.tudor-portraits.com/HenryWriothesley.jpg

While the portrait was being painted Henry Neville was in the next cell, writing Hamlet - and both of them were under sentence of death, for their part in the Essex plot. The sons were all in on the plot - which would have made James king anyway - and Neville chancellor. Which is why James did not get rid of them when he took on the throne - they had wanted him there enough to risk their own lives.

A complicated theory - but one which answers all the questions that I can throw at the history that I have found out. Shakespearean !!! We have still got some of the bones - we should dig them up and test the theory. It would not suit Queen Victoria - or the current academic or royal world - but I do not think that the "professionals" are the ones who are going to come up with a theory that matches all the extra-ordinary facts.

I am keen on it, because it puts Neville at the center of the last 1000 years of Anglo-Saxon history, because he it was who really got two party democracy going in parliament, who helped establish the USA via the "Virgin"ia colony, who edited the King James Bible, who got the first clean water into London with his New River that I have seen still running into London, nearly 400 years after it was built, and who tried to restructure the taxation system that caused our civil war.

Anybody who could write the very particular and special plays that are the works of "Shakespeare" was a seriously bright, enlightened and moral person - not the guy from Stratford who did not teach his two daughters to read, who took people to court for small sums of money, whose ultimate dream was to own a big house near Stratford and not do anything of significance in the last years of his life.

[Seymour Egert]

Thank God for the glorifying of the English language in these plays. Who else but the writer of these plays created universal men and women that live today.

[Stephen Day]

Take a look at www.ivaltd.com/shakespeare
Brenda James's assertion that she "Cannot see any point on which this theory falls down at the moment" may be a trifle premature. It could indeed fall down if Henry Neville was yet another one of a small group of literary "consenting adults" - writers who contributed to Shakespeare's masterly production, direction, choreography and box office management skills, of works now attributed to him.

[Desi]

"have a look at George Greenwood about the Northumberland Manuscript (1922):

http://home.att.net/~tleary/northclb.htm

But before we come to the "scribbler" let us examine the scribble, and see what date we can assign to the writings. What Mr. Spedding calls "the title page," forming half of the outside sheet, "which appears to be the only cover the volume ever had," is covered all over with the so-called scribblings. "It contains," says Mr. Dowse, "some two hundred entries, independently of the 'Praises,' and the list of titles." Mr. Spedding, Mr. Dowse, and Mr. Burgoyne have reproduced this leaf in facsimile, and the latter has provided us with a modern script rendering of it. It may be said to be divided into two columns. At the top of the right-hand column stands the name "Mr. ffrancis Bacon," followed by the list of "Praises," which again is succeeded by what Mr. Spedding has called the table of contents. At the top of the left-hand column stands the name of Nevill, twice written, and not far below it is the punning motto of the Nevill family, Ne vile velis. "Perhaps,'' says Mr. Burgoyne, "this gives a clue to the original ownership of the volume as it seems to indicate that the collection was written for or was the property of some member of the Nevill family." It is suggested that this was Sir Henry Nevil (1564- 1615), Bacon's nephew, and a friend of Essex. "

It seems impossible Ms Brenda did not know about this letter, and thus she is stealing someone else's idea, claiming it as her own. This does not sound very academic, and it makes you wonder about the rest of her arguments.

Imho, the new theory is very far-fetched and unlikely. Again.