Stratfordian Straws by Isabel Gortázar

During the past few years we have been observing some Stratfordians clutching at straws; the last case being Prof. Stanley Wells with his delighted discovery that the Janssen/Cobbe Portrait shows, at last, the face of their beloved Bard. In fact, it seems generally accepted that the man in the portrait is Sir Thomas Overbury, but Mr. Wells decided otherwise and announced it to the media. Not that this particular issue matters much in respect of the Authorship Question, because even if it were the case that the Janssen/Cobbe portrait is Shakespeare’s that would in no way prove that he wrote anything, only that he was wealthy enough to wear such an elaborate costume. Compared to the sober attire of the Chandos man and even the Monument man, this would indeed be revealing.

But what is remarkable is that despite all the research that Stratfordian academics continue to do, the information that has so far come to light is repeated evidence that William Shakespeare was an excellent businessman who combined his activities as a merchant in Stratford with his (necessarily light) theatrical activities in London. Such theatrical activities imply that he was either a principal actor (which we know he was not), or an important shareholder of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later the King’s Men. Apart from that, and as an anecdote, we know that he composed an extraordinary will, in which both the second best bed, the one and only legacy he left to his wife, and the rings that he left to his ffellowes John Hemyngs, Richard Burbage & Henry Cundell were afterthoughts.¹

In an illuminating work called The Progresses, Processions and Magnificient Festivities of King James the First [...] Comprising Forty Masques and Entertainments [...], in three volumes,² edited by one John Nichols, we are made aware of a curious situation.

Starting with Sorrowes Joy, the Cambridge Poems on the death of Elizabeth and Accession of James, the volumes follow King James’ reign from the moment of the Queen’s death, along his progress south from Edinburgh to London, all the way to his coronation and on to the end of his reign, including the various events that took place in Madrid, during Prince Charles’ visit to that city in 1623, in a last attempt to bring about the marriage of the Prince to the Spanish Infanta and her considerable dowry.

Along the pages of these three volumes, we find practically every name related to poetry and literature that we have ever heard of within that period (and even several names that I, at least, had never heard before). Prominent among these is Ben Jonson, with no less than thirty entries between masques and poems, in a total of one hundred and four events recorded.³

In other words, virtually every important poet and dramatist living during the reign of King James (vg: Jonson, Marston, Daniel, Middleton, Dekker, Beaumont, Munday, Drayton, Chapman, etc.) is mentioned at least once in these volumes, as having written and/or taken part in the said festivities, masques and entertainments. That is to say, every important poet and dramatist save two: William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. Their names do not appear at all in the index of those one hundred and four events.

Shakespeare, however, appears once in the main text and twice in footnotes by Nichols, one of which footnotes is interesting enough to be reproduced, below. Fletcher is also mentioned in a footnote as “a celebrated dramatic poet." But here is the one and only piece of information on Shakespeare that appears in the main text. (Vol 1, 156) Dated 19th May 1603: “the Royal Licence was granted to Laurence Fletches, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillipes, John Heminge, Henrie Condell, William Sly, Robert Armin, Richard Cowley, and the rest of their associates, freely to use and exercise the arte and faculty of playing comedies, tragedies, histories, interludes, morals, pastorals, stage plays and such like others as they have already studied or hereafter shall use or study, as well as for the recreation of our loving subjects, as well as for our solace and pleasure, when we shall think good to see them, during our pleasure; and the said comedies, tragedies histories [etc.] and such like to show and exercise publicly to their best commodity, when the infection of the plague shall decrease, as well within their now usual place The Globe, within our County of Surrey.” This is an obvious list of actors and/or shareholders, not authors.

Then in 1614 we find the following entry (Vol 3, pg 26): A letter from John Chamberlaine to his faithful correspondent Dudley Carlton: “They have plays at court every night, both holy-days and working days, wherein they show great patience, being for the most part such poor stuff that, instead of delight, they send the auditory away with discontent. Indeed our Poets’ brains and inventions are grown very dry, insomuch that of five new plays there is not one that pleases, and therefore they are driven to furbish over their old; which stand them in best stead and bring them most profit.”

To this, J. Nichols adds the following footnote: “Had one of the enthusiastic annotators of Shakespeare met with this sentence, he would not have failed to twist it to his own advantage, by remarking that the career of the Immortal Bard was now closed or nearly so; that other dramatists could not satisfy the public appetite, lately pampered by his unrivalled productions, and that therefore his old plays were obliged to be revived; yet the year 1614 is affixed by Johnson and Steevens⁴ to the Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, which play and The Tempest Warburton⁵ calls ‘the noblest efforts of that sublime and amazing imagination peculiar to Shakespeare!’ It is a truth which requires no demonstration, that Shakespeare in his own time was little more thought of by the public than his fellow playwrights were; and yet it is a remarkable proof that such was the case, that we never find him mentioned by the ever communicative Mr Chamberlaine.” (My italics.)

We have a further example of Mr. Chamberlaine’s “forgetfulness” of, or simply indifference to, the man Shakespeare. Immediately after the information given above, about the Royal Licence, in which we have seen William Shakespeare’s name listed with the other shareholders and/or players, Nichols inserts a footnote on the burning of The Globe on 29th June 1613. In the eighteen lines of this footnote he quotes two letters, one from John Chamberlain to Sir Ralph Winwood, and another from Sir Henry Wooton to “A Friend." The letters are highly informative and include the two current titles of the play that was being performed when the theatre went up in flames: Henry VIII or All Is True,⁶ but neither the correspondences nor Mr. Nichols mentions the name of the author struck by such calamity.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is all that we find about William Shakespeare in the 2,553 pages (indexes and footnotes included) that Mr. Nichols managed to put together in an extraordinary collection of literary activities, court gossip and general goings on among the royalty, the aristocracy and the intelligentsia during the twenty-three years of King James’ reign. His observation that Shakespeare is never mentioned in Chamberlaine’s innumerable letters I find equally significant.

So, looking at Mr. Nichols' extraordinary collection of private performances and social activities, we see no Shakespeare at all between 1603 and 1616, except as an actor/manager. No Shakespeare! And yet we know that the author of the thirty-six plays in the FF was not above writing masques, such as appear, for example, in Love’s Labour’s Lost or The Tempest. Could the reason for this conspicuous absence be that all these masques, performed at court or in private circles by members of the nobility and even the royal family, required the physical presence of the authors in the proceedings? In Jonson’s Masque of Oberon, for example, performed at Whitehall on 1st January 1611, the part of Oberon was played by Prince Henry⁷; the Queen herself and Lucy, Countess of Bedford,⁸ performed in Jonson’s Masque of Blackness, Masque of Beauty and Masque of the Queens. Can we doubt that Jonson was present during rehearsals?

The Shakespere of the Coat of Arms was a man who liked his social climbing, and these masques and entertainments were all the rage, especially while Queen Anne was still alive (she died 1619); so can we believe that he would have missed the chance to hobnob with the royals and the nobility, while giving them stage directions? And the reason couldn’t be that he was too busy writing the, at least, ten plays that appear in the ten years between 1603 and the burning of the Globe in 1613; after all, the author of the FF should have been able to write a masque standing on his head.

So perhaps there was a different explanation for the absence of Mr. Shakespeare of Stratford, both in Nichols' masques and entertainments and in Mr. Chamberlaine’s letters.

Isabel Gortázar

© Isabel Gortázar, October 2009

Isabel Gortázar is an independent scholar, specializing in Shakespeare and Marlowe studies. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Marlowe Society (UK) and a founding member of the International Marlowe Society. She divides her time between London and Bilbao, Spain.

¹The words “Item; I give unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture” are written above the main text, as an amendment; there is no other bequest to Mrs. Shakespeare in the will. Also, the words specifying the money left to his three ffellowes, xxvjª viijª Apiece to buy them Ringes, are written above the main text.
²Collected and published by John Nichols, FSA. Lon. Edinb. & Perth. Printed 1828. The third volume is double.
³As a matter of interest here, Beaumont contributes with just one Masque of the Middle Temple and Gray’s Inn, 1612-13, (later inserted into The Two Noble Kinsmen); so at the end of his writing career.
⁴“Johnson and Steevens”: This would refer to the 10-volume work The Works of Shakespeare with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators (1773), prepared by George Steevens (1736-1800). Known as the “Johnson and Steevens Edition," Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is supposed to have contributed very little to the work.
⁵William Warburton (1698-1779) published his own edition of Shakespeare’s works in 1747, after working on it for nine years. It seems Dr. Johnson was not impressed by Warburton’s comments and opinions.
⁶In the FF, the play appears as The Famous History of the Life of Henry the Eighth, but the original title, according to contemporary letters was All is True.
⁷For those who believe that the Earl of Oxford would write plays for the public theatres under the alias of “William Shakespeare," I hope they don't believe also that Prince Henry used to steal away in the evenings to play Hamlet at the Globe under an assumed name, just because he enjoyed performing masques at court.
⁸The Countess of Bedford, Sir John Harington’s daughter, appears in the Anthony Bacon papers (Lambeth Palace Library) at the time of Mr. Le Doux’s visit to Burley in 1595/6. Lucy Bedford and her mother, Lady Harington, became constant companions of Queen Anne, while John Harington Junior became the intimate friend of Prince Henry.

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Shakespeare Scholars: A Lament by Anthony Kellett

It seems sensible that the approach to Shakespeare’s biography should be detached and scientific to yield meaningful and worthwhile results. However, many participants appear to connect so emotionally to their particular beliefs that they will go to great lengths to protect them; the destruction or creation of evidence has even been alleged. Why would someone do that? Let us dwell on this for a moment. I can grasp someone defending the reputation of the author by foul means, out of a misplaced loyalty, evolved from a love of the plays. Whilst reprehensible, I can at least understand that mentality. However, no one seeks to denigrate the plays or playwright; non-Stratfordians are merely seeking to identify him. Surely, any loyalty to Shakespeare of Stratford results solely from the belief that he wrote the works. If evidence contradicts that, why is there a continuing attachment to this man? Instead, one would think that former supporters, drawn to the Stratford man by the works, would be moved to seek the true author with renewed vigour; keen to find the bringer of joy, deserving of their hitherto misplaced admiration, denied to him for 400 years.

It could be that my expectations have been unreasonably raised by my long associations with those people I call “Scientific Historians.” Archaeologists and palaeontologists examine evidence and frequently extrapolate their findings to draw theoretical conclusions. However, in doing that (in my experience) they seek to uncover the truth and, furthermore, present the full evidence, enabling others to draw their own conclusions. Though I am sure there are bad apples in every barrel, personally I am yet to encounter a situation where these people distort or hold back evidence. Moreover, I have witnessed the joy as they uncover new evidence that destroys their own existing beliefs, and long-held theories are constantly adjusted to accommodate those changes.

I dismay at the scholarship standards applied to the Shakespearean authorship issue, on both sides of the argument. Unavoidably, the lack of facts requires the derivation of theories based on circumstantial evidence. My own piece on "William Shakespeare, Businessman" is merely my interpretation of what the evidence leads me to conclude. If facts were presented conflicting with this view, then I would adjust the relevant aspect or, indeed, the entire theory, if necessary. Therein lies the difference; those seeking the truth are constantly reassessing the data to find a suitable conclusion. However, Stratfordian scholars already have the immovable verdict; they are stuck with the conclusion that the Stratford man is the author. What chance does this give them of reaching a reasoned conclusion? Worse still, the necessity for “William Shakespeare of Stratford” to be the universal answer inevitably evolves into deceiving the general public and twisting arguments to manipulate opinions. Surely, this is wrong. Again, I have no problem with their having a theory to fit the known facts, but give the public the whole truth with which they too can form a valid opinion.

I am sure many readers will be shocked to read such allegations and call for me to be pelted with rancid fruit in the Stratford stocks for even suggesting such a thing. In that event, and as an appeal for clemency, here are several cases to illustrate my point.

This is a classic quote, regarding Shakespeare, from Collier in 1857: “A young man, so gifted, would not, and could not, wait until he was five or six and twenty before he made considerable and most successful attempts at poetical composition.” Excellent, some sanity at last; it appears Collier doubts Shakespeare’s authorship of Venus and Adonis. No, I’m afraid not, for he continues: “[W]e feel morally certain that 'Venus and Adonis' was in being anterior to Shakespeare's quitting Stratford [widely believed to be 1587]…it seems to have been written in the open air of a fine country like Warwickshire, with all the freshness of the recent impression of natural objects." For just one second there, I thought Collier had seen the light.

Shakespeare was age 29 when Venus and Adonis was published in 1593. The “five or six and twenty” used by Collier was his supposed age when he arrived in London. Notwithstanding this, can you see Collier’s problem? His logic dictated that Shakespeare would not have produced his first work at age 25 or 26, never mind at 29. However, it was equally impossible for Collier to conclude that Shakespeare did not write the poem, since that would contradict all that Collier held sacred. The only choice he had was to dispute the date of the work.

My bewilderment is not limited to nineteenth-century scholars. Jonathan Bate discussed, with Michael Rubbo in Much Ado About Something, how “we know” Marlowe could not write comedy. His justification was that Henslowe’s diary records payments to Mr. Bird and Mr. Rowley for the comic scenes in Dr. Faustus. Bate cannot be faulted, insofar as everything he said was, indeed, true. However, the facts he omitted tell us far more about the play and, significantly, Bate himself, than the truth he spoke.

Dr. Faustus was a very successful play; the Admiral’s Men performed it at least 25 times between 1594 and 1597. It is widely believed to have been first performed at least as early as 1592. All of which Mr. Bate surely knows. What he must also know is that the payments to Bird and Rowley were not made until 1602. Furthermore, I assume Bate is aware that the earliest extant copy of that play is Text A from 1604 (at best, prepared from foul papers). We can only guess at Bird and Rowley’s additions by comparing this earliest text with a 1616 extended version, known as Text B, not exactly a satisfactory solution. Therefore, Bate is judging Marlowe based on a play that had been enormously successful for as long as ten years before these scenes were added. Even now, Bate has never seen a copy of Marlowe’s original play so that he can properly judge the author’s vision. That is not acceptable scholarship, for me, from someone whose opinion will be taken as fact by an unsuspecting public. Can you imagine, 400 years from now, having no copies of Peter Sellers's work, we deduce that he could not play comedy because Steve Martin added comic lines to The Pink Panther?

If readers consider Bate’s claims to be misleading, they pale in comparison to the fables compiled by Michael Wood for his TV series, In Search of Shakespeare.

At the beginning of the second episode, Wood wonders how Shakespeare became such an immediate sensation on arriving in London since, he explains, “Ten years before, Shakespeare had been a teenage father in Stratford with no job and few prospects.” Adding, “What did he do in those ten lost years?” Wood therefore identifies “The Ten Lost Years” as 1583-1593, since Shakespeare could not have been a “teenage father” until May 1583, when his first child was born. The next scene sees us transported to Lancashire and the house of Sir Bernard de Hoghton and Wood tells us: “Sir Bernard and his family believe they have the key to William’s lost years.” We are shown the will of Alexander Hoghton that makes a bequest to a William Shakshafte which, this family claims, was actually William Shakespeare, living over 100 miles north of Stratford. The date of the will is omitted from the program.

In fact, this will was executed on August 3, 1581, when Shakespeare was only 17 years old and some 21 months prior to him having “a family to support” as Wood claimed in this section of the program. Having already covered the first “Lancashire-free” 19 years of Shakespeare’s life (including the birth of his daughter) in episode one, where does Wood suggest we insert this phase?

The worst part of Wood’s presentation is not, surprisingly, the shoddy and haphazard chronology. In the notes of his accompanying book, tucked away in the back (and out of sight of his TV viewers) Wood states that “the Shakeshafte theory has not survived closer scrutiny.” Since Wood first visited Hoghton Hall some twenty years earlier, I am staggered that he presented these spurious facts, to a worldwide audience, without that “closer scrutiny." It took me around 20 minutes to discover the slight chronological flaw in this theory, not 20 years; and yet it appears Wood has no problem leaving his television audience completely misled, as he grins his way to his next scholarly masterpiece.

Daryl Pinksen has recently produced a study of Greene’s Groat’s-worth of Wit and its reference to a “Shake-scene,” which Stratfordians maintain is William Shakespeare of Stratford. We all understand the desperate need for Stratfordians to claim this as fact. Without the Groat’s-worth allusion, there is no known reference to Shakespeare, connected to the London literary world, until the publication of Venus and Adonis in June 1593, around two weeks after Marlowe’s disappearance. However, whilst we cannot completely rule out Shakespeare as Greene’s target, the obvious conclusion to draw is that Edward Alleyn inspired Greene’s work. Greene had previously referred to Alleyn as “Aesop’s Crow” and Alleyn would be recognized (by the supposed addressees) as the great actor “beautified” by them, the writers. As far as we know, Shakespeare, by contrast, had never been mentioned by anyone, anywhere (outside the Stratford records) by 1592. Why would a reader be expected to guess Greene was referring to Shakespeare? Moreover, since Greene had already referred to Alleyn in these terms, even Alleyn would assume the “upstart crow, beautified by our feathers” in Groat’s-worth was referring to him. Greene, we are told, wrote this on his deathbed; he probably knew he would not be around to explain his warning to fellow playwrights. Why would he risk being completely misunderstood by referring to Shakespeare in terms that all his friends would assume to be Alleyn? This is not sensible to conclude “Shake-scene” was Shakespeare. The only connection is that it contains the word “Shake.” Seriously. That is not even scholarship, never mind good scholarship. Stratfordians would argue that Greene adapts a line from Henry VI, Part III. Indeed he does. “A tigers heart wrapped in a player’s hide” is the expression Greene used. This is a classic problem with a vast wealth of Stratfordian arguments. In order to prove Greene was referring to Shakespeare as the crow, you have to already assume Shakespeare wrote that line which is hardly established fact. Alleyn, on the other hand, very likely recited that line on stage since it was said by Richard Duke of York, the part Alleyn would most likely have played. It was a current play and so Alleyn had probably spoken the line very recently. What would a reasonable historian be expected to conclude?

Let us consider the recent contribution by Sally Jenkins, in the Washington Post Magazine. It is not unusual for even sports journalists to contribute to the debate since, as she explains, “all journalists are by nature untrained historians.” And Jenkins curiously affirms: “The Author Controversy persists despite considerable documentary evidence. We have the man from Stratford's pay stubs for performing at court, his certificate of occupancy for the Globe Theatre, and his will, in which he left memorial rings to some London actors. Funny he would do that if he was just a country burgher who didn't write the plays."

First, I do not wish to be pedantic, but we don’t have pay stubs for Shakespeare performing at court. We have a record that he was paid (with two of his other sharers) when his company performed at court. Whether Shakespeare performed is not known; though, in this context, it is somewhat irrelevant. Is Jenkins seriously claiming that, because Shakespeare was an actor, a theatre sharer and had actor friends, he therefore wrote the plays? Is that reasonable? Surely I am not alone in thinking this is a preposterous assertion. I suppose it reasonable, therefore, to conclude that the plays written by Burbage, Kemp, and Alleyn (all theatre sharers, actors and friends of actors) were the equal of Shakespeare’s but, we must assume, lost in the sands of time. I would suggest, to Sally Jenkins, that before she employs sarcasm to emphasise a blatantly obvious fact, she ensures the fact is obvious to everyone else. It would be far more “funny” as a result.

It is noteworthy that an expertise on the works of Shakespeare does not imbue people with similar authority on the authorship issue. A number of Stratfordian scholars are reluctant to enter into the debate and, as a result, cannot be assumed to know the arguments in detail. Nevertheless, their opinions are still held in great esteem, which does not so much remind me of Shakespeare, as it does Hans Christian Andersen, who wrote an immensely underrated and perceptive story called The Emperor’s New Clothes. Adapted to this situation, loosely, it would be a story about a person respected purely because he studied Shakespeare and, mistakenly, someone to whom others should listen. As Hans Christian Andersen astutely observed, the masses are quick to admire the things they think they should, when they have little or no confidence in their own judgment. It is a very human trait for one to assume that so-called experts are far wiser than you. This is a dangerous assumption. It is for this reason that some, such as Terry Ross and David Kathman, must be applauded for at least entering into a proper, scholarly argument of the issues and defending the Stratfordian corner on evidential grounds. It is only unfortunate that most their attention is directed towards the Oxfordian lobby, which is not the Stratford man’s strongest opposition.

Alexa Stevenson, Penn State University, recently wrote an article, on the ResearchPennState website, based on an interview with Patrick Cheney, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature. She says: “One of the chief arguments of those who doubt his authorship is that Shakespeare lacked the education and experience to have produced such a wide-ranging body of work. Not so, argues Cheney, noting that William Shakespeare had a superior education, some of it acquired from grammar school in Stratford, but much expanded upon as an adult.” Most know that this is pure speculation, but let us give Cheney some rope here. Stevenson continues: “Adds Cheney, research shows that even in a pre-library age, Shakespeare had a good deal of access to books. ‘Shakespeare was not simply a genius; he was by all accounts a voracious reader: the plots from nearly all his plays and poems come from books.’” Ah, it appears Cheney used the rope to hang himself! I would like to see that research. I have never come across anything to suggest “Shakespeare had a good deal of access to books.” I would also be keen to hear the “all accounts” that describe him as a “voracious reader.” Let me not be cruel; it is obvious what Cheney is really saying. If I reword the relevant passage (as an impartial historian may write it) it would look like this: “Research shows that, even in a pre-library age, the author had a good deal of access to books. The author was not simply a genius; he was by all accounts a voracious reader: the plots from nearly all his plays and poems come from books.” This is a proper, true statement of the facts and sensible assumptions. One’s evidence, in support of the Stratford man’s education, cannot be to cite the same plays that many claim he was unable to write because he had no education. Cheney may as well have said, “We know he was educated enough to write the plays because he wrote the plays.”

It could be that Cheney has far more convincing reasons for believing Shakespeare of Stratford was capable of writing the plays. This, after all, is merely the briefest comment from a short article. So, if that be the case, Professor Cheney, let us hear them; but do not treat Shakespeare’s doubters as idiots that can be swept aside with ill-considered sound bites. Non-Stratfordians have, in many cases, devoted as much time to their research as you have to yours. Therefore, (and probably very soon), you will need to be better prepared to defend your case than you are currently.

Then we have that Shakespearean giant, Stanley Wells. He even brings a smile to my face, as he grins like the proverbial Cheshire cat, proudly standing next to his “newly discovered” Shakespeare portrait – the Cobbe (in reality, the only thing that is “new” is Wells’s declaration, since the portrait has been debated for many decades now). There is a thorough analysis of this claim, by Ros Barber, on the Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection blog, with a link to Katherine Duncan-Jones’s TLS response, both of which I recommend you read for a more detailed account.

Wells has responded to Duncan-Jones’s criticism with a staunch defense. I apologize, in advance, for reducing years of toil to such simple terms, but space (and a finite lifespan) dictates that I do so. Simply put, Wells’s team claims the Cobbe to be the original of the Janssen portrait owned by Folger; whilst KDJ’s team claims the Cobbe is a copy of a Bodleian library-owned portrait of Sir Thomas Overbury. Let us assume the Cobbe is the original of the Janssen - a painting which may, or may not, be Shakespeare. I do not see that this helps us a great deal, since many believe there is no reason to think the Janssen portrait depicts Shakespeare either (including, amusingly, Folger’s own Erin Blake, who seems to think the Janssen might be Sir Thomas Overbury!). Wells disagrees, claiming that the addition of a receding hairline was not an attempt to mimic the First Folio’s balding Droeshout engraving, but was, instead, an early addition, proving the Janssen was “updated within living memory of him [Shakespeare].” I can see his reasoning: updating portraits is commonplace; I have recently had all the hair removed from a portrait of me, aged 22, just so it looks more current. However, why this negates someone mimicking Droeshout’s work, Wells doesn’t explain, but I assume it is obvious to him.

In fairness to Wells, the Cobbe does appear to have belonged to the Earl of Southampton, claimed to be the patron of Shakespeare because he dedicated two poems to the Earl. He may have known the author of those two poems, we don’t know. However, there is no evidence that Southampton, despite being an avid theatregoer, ever paid, met or even mentioned anyone called Shakespeare, let alone Shakespeare of Stratford. There is no evidence Southampton mourned when Shakespeare died; the First Folio was dedicated to the Herberts, not Southampton. Even so, we are supposed to believe that, if Southampton had a portrait of anyone in his house, it had to be of Shakespeare. Conversely, Sir Thomas Overbury was a great friend and political ally of Southampton, which, some say, adds weight to the claim that the portrait is more likely to be of him. Wells, once more, disagrees, claiming, “Overbury was notorious,” making it “astonishing” to suppose that multiple copies of his portrait had survived unnamed. The fact that multiple copies of a Shakespeare portrait survive unnamed is obviously far less “astonishing” to Wells, since he knows, as do we, Shakespeare’s name is rarely found where expected.

I would highlight one point here, in order that newcomers may become better attuned to a non-Stratfordian mindset. Imagine that Wells gets his day of glory and the Cobbe portrait actually turns out to be Shakespeare. What does Wells have: a portrait of the author of the plays and poems, or a portrait of the businessman from Stratford? The major contribution this would make is to link a man named Shakespeare with Southampton, but that is all. It will tell us nothing more about the roles of either Shakespeare, a writer or the Stratford man. Non-Stratfordians have no ulterior motive for doubting the provenance of the Cobbe portrait, other than a dislike of wild, illogical reasoning.

Since I am berating Stratfordian scholars for biased and ill-conceived theories, it would be remiss of me not to highlight similar transgressions committed by the non-Stratfordian lobby. They are far from innocent; and their amateur enthusiasm, for conspiracy at every turn, often manifests itself in far more outrageous claims than any Stratfordian would countenance. This piece is not the time or place to start debating the relative merits of various authorship theories. However, I am frequently baffled that a complete lack of the correct literary talent is not deemed a problem. Some, like Neville’s supporters, avoid this by the absence of any creative works whatsoever (all, presumably, written anonymously). Others seem to overcome this deficiency by seeing great genius in work that, in reality, contains little or none. Whilst it is not illogical to assume that an author, writing under a pseudonym, would have no extant works attributed to him by name, I find it a little more difficult to reconcile claimants with extant works of inferior (or, at least, ill-matched) quality. That said, perhaps there is even a logical explanation for that somewhere. I am trying to be as open-minded as possible (Stratfordians, look and learn). However, the fact that Henry Neville owned a foundry (Shakespeare, apparently, mentions metal a lot), is not really of major significance. Shakespeare’s canon is filled with expertise on many trades. If the author did not know about a particular subject, it is far more logical to assume that he simply asked someone in possession of that knowledge. Authors are not required to be experts in all subjects to which they refer.

The similarities between the life of Oxford and Hamlet, whilst interesting, are no sensible reason for concluding Oxford wrote the play. The similarities between Hamlet and Saxo’s Amleth are equally strong. Marlowe, at age 15, could, conceivably, have been Mary Sidney’s lover and fathered William Herbert. Then again, so could just about every poet, playwright, artist and scientist that visited Wilton House. It is for wild, unsubstantiated claims, such as these, that we chastise Stratfordians; and we must apply the same tests, to our own theories, that we demand of others.

It could be that I am completely wrong, comparing literary scholars with historians. Perhaps literary scholars do not consider themselves as historians, and would simply say to me that it was not their job to enlighten the world about Shakespeare in a fact-based way. If that is the case, then I apologize unreservedly. However, it raises the question, “Why do we not have some proper historians study this issue and bring more relevant expertise to the subject?”

I have an enormous admiration for the intellect and knowledge of men like Jonathan Bate and Stanley Wells. I could not begin to tell you what I would give to have that breadth of knowledge demonstrated by the author of Soul of the Age. It clearly displays an encyclopaedic familiarity with Shakespeare’s works. The “lament” of this piece is that I mourn the fact we do not have intellectual giants, like Bate, searching for the truth behind the authorship, rather than using that knowledge to manipulate the facts to support the Stratford man’s claim. Unfortunately, I am sure the response to this plea will be that these scholars have indeed examined the facts and completely satisfied themselves as to the validity of Shakespeare’s authorship claims. I am not suggesting they do not believe this with every fibre of their being. Moreover, I very much doubt it would be possible to render such a staunch defense of the Stratford man without this unshakeable belief. I do not question their sincerity for one second; I simply question their judgment.

Continued loyalty to the Stratford man is not a sensible reaction to the doubts about Shakespeare’s authorship and, in truth, is an improbable explanation for the staunch defense. It is far more likely that these scholars are defending their own reputations, not Shakespeare. For too long, the establishment has been fighting in William’s corner and it is far too late for them suddenly to see the light while maintaining their credibility. The battle for the hearts and minds of this generation of entrenched Stratfordians is, I’m afraid, one the doubters are never likely to win.

Anthony Kellett

© Anthony Kellett, October 2009

Also by Anthony Kellett: "Shakespeare's Anonymous Death" and "William Shakespeare, Businessman - Forgotten Genius"

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Oxfordians and the 1604 Question by Peter Farey

The Earl of Oxford is known to have died in 1604, when according to virtually all Shakespearean scholars at least a quarter of Shakespeare's plays were yet to be written. Oxfordians - who unlike Marlovians generally accept the date upon which their candidate is supposed to have died - imagine that they can overcome this problem by claiming that these plays must have all been written before then, and that the scholars have simply shifted them into the period c.1592-1613 because that corresponds with what would have been the writing career of their author, William Shakespeare of Stratford. Oxfordian chronologies would have him writing everything some ten or more years earlier.

Unfortunately for them, however, it is not quite as simple as that. How much the blank verse used in English drama changed over the years cannot simply be ignored in this way. Let us look at one such change - the gradual but steady move away from a procession of end-stopped lines in regular iambic pentameter.

The opposite of an end-stopped line, an open line - or a run-on line, or enjambment - is one in which the meaning flows on to the next line without punctuation. For example, see Prospero's famous lines in Act IV scene 1 of The Tempest:

Our revels now are ended: these our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air.

It would simply not be possible to put any sort of punctuation at the end of the second line without wrecking the sense. That's an open line. And a feminine ending? The rhythm of Shakespeare's blank verse is the iambic (di-dum) pentameter (repeated 5 times). This is how lines two and three scan, but not line one, which has acquired an extra "di" syllable at the end. That's a feminine ending.

In a post to SHAKSPER ("The Global Electronic Shakespeare Conference") on March 2, 1996, David Kathman wrote: "The use of feminine endings in blank verse increased steadily among English poets in general between the 1580s and the 1620s, just as the use of enjambment increased steadily in the same period; Shakespeare followed both of these trends"; and as Ward Elliott and Robert Valenza tell us: "The percentages of both indicators tripled over Shakespeare's lifetime."¹

Here, using Elliott and Valenza's figures, are details of plays by Beaumont, Chapman, Daniel, Dekker, Fletcher, Greene, Heywood, Jonson, Kyd, Herbert (Mary), Lyly (that lone one at the bottom), Marlowe, Middleton, Munday, Nashe, Peele and Porter.²As we can see, even though the data come from many different playwrights, there is a clearly discernable trend, as indicated by the computer-generated trendline. Note in particular that before 1600 only two plays exceeded a usage rate of 35, whereas after 1600 only two plays did not exceed that level. By "usage rate," we mean the number of open lines plus feminine endings there are on average per hundred lines of verse.

Although there is no generally agreed chronology for the works of Shakespeare, the differences between the dates suggested by various scholars are relatively minor. Given that the figures being used in these graphs are those of Elliott and Valenza, it seems appropriate to use their dates too.

Here is a graph in which the usage rate for each Shakespeare play according to Elliott and Valenza is plotted against the date they suggest for it. It is worth bearing in mind that their intention in assembling this information had nothing to do with our reason for using it here. Even without the trendline, one can see how Shakespeare's figures increase over the years as David Kathman reported - in fact at a quite extraordinarily constant rate. What should be pointed out is that every one of the plays usually given a date after the death of the Earl of Oxford in 1604 has a usage rate greater than 45. Every other Shakespeare play (i.e. 1604 or earlier) except Measure for Measure (50) and All's Well That Ends Well (51) has a rate of less than that.

Although these dates are the ones given by Elliott and Valenza, the trend would have been no less evident if we had used the dates published by any other Shakespearean scholar. No matter which of the various orthodox chronologies one chooses, there is a highly significant trend by which these figures increase over the years. In other words we can be very confident that most if not all of those plays given a date after the death of the Earl of Oxford were indeed written after those given a date before it.

Some Oxfordians argue that the whole timetable could be moved back ten years or so, which would result in precisely the same trend in Shakespeare's works, and simply mean that the other writers took longer than we thought to catch on to the changing approach. Unfortunately for this argument, however, it would mean them bumping straight into the buffer which is Francis Meres.

In 1598 Francis Meres published his Palladis Tamia which, had it not been for its relevance to Shakespeare, might have been largely forgotten long before now. In this he gave a list of plays by Shakespeare, which clearly indicated that they must have been performed by that year. He said that Shakespeare was the "most excellent" English dramatist for both comedy and tragedy, and gave as examples of the former The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice and the now untraceable Love's Labour's Won. For tragedy he cited Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, King John, Titus Andronicus, and Romeo and Juliet.

As Oxfordians are quick to point out, however, it's not a complete list of the plays Shakespeare had written by then, since it is fairly clear that the three parts of Henry VI and The Taming of the Shrew - although not necessarily with the same titles - had also been performed before 1598. So is there a specific reason for those plays to have been omitted which would not apply to any other? Yes, there certainly is.

This is what Edward Burns says in his Arden (3rd series) edition of 1 Henry VI (p.8), describing the first page of the theatre owner Philip Henslowe's accounts: "What follows is a day-to-day calendar of the plays performed that year at the Rose theatre by a company under the patronage of Lord Strange - hence 'my lord stranges mene'. About a third of the way down the page a line reads 'ne - Rd at harey the vj the 3 of marche 1591...iijli xvjs 8d'." "Harey the vj" is generally accepted as being 1 Henry VI, and there is no record of it ever being performed by any company other than Lord Strange's Men.

In his Arden 3 edition of 2 Henry VI (p.121), Ronald Knowles says: "...it seems probable that, by 1591, 2 and 3 Henry VI had been performed successfully, presumably by Lord Strange's company, since 'Pembroke's Men' appears on the title page of The True Tragedy [the 1595 quarto of 3 Henry VI] and this company is generally considered an offshoot of Strange's." 2 Henry VI had been called "The First Part of the Contention between the two great houses of York and Lancaster." That it was the "first part" may be taken to indicate that both plays were owned and performed by the same company.

All three of the Henry VI plays therefore seem to have been the property of the Strange/Pembroke companies and there is no record of their being associated in any way with the Lord Chamberlain's company. The reason for their omission from Meres's list is therefore fairly clear - he didn't know that they were by Shakespeare, resident playwright for the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

Similarly, The Taming of the Shrew had a quarto version called The Taming of A Shrew and, as Brian Morris (Arden 2, p.45) says, its title-page states, "As it was sundry times acted by the Right honorable, the Earle of Pembroke his servants." The next time we hear of it is in the First Folio of 1623.

Titus Andronicus was similar to this, although Meres did include it in his list. What we find in this case, however - despite evidence of it having passed through the hands of Strange's, Pembroke's and even Sussex's Men - is that when Q2 appeared in 1600 (only two years after Meres's list) it had added the Lord Chamberlain to the noblemen whose servants had played it, most probably before 1598.

There is no evidence of any of the rest of the plays on Meres's list having been played by companies other than the Lord Chamberlain's. It's been suggested that Richard III might have originated with the Strange/Pembroke group, but the fact that the 1598 quarto is ascribed to Shakespeare - and that there was a bawdy 1602 joke about Burbage playing Richard - makes it fairly certain that it was in the Lord Chamberlain's Men's repertoire by the time Meres mentioned it.

So Meres's list seems to consist only of those plays said to have been by Shakespeare which were in the Lord Chamberlain's Men's repertory by 1598. Most scholars therefore quite reasonably claim that the first plays written by Shakespeare were those Meres listed, plus the other four, and that any other plays of his made their first appearance after this date.

In considering whether this claim is justified it is interesting to see how much the two techniques are used in those first 15 plays of Shakespeare - the 11 on Meres's list for which we have data plus the four missing ones - when compared with the rest of his plays. If we do so we find that (with the exception of 1 Henry IV and The Merchant of Venice) every one of them has a usage rate lower than 35. In contrast, every other play of his (with the exception of The Merry Wives of Windsor which has hardly any verse to speak of) has a rate exceeding 35. This offers massive support for the Shakespearean scholars' claim.

That this matches the trend observed among Shakespeare's contemporaries is reinforced by the fact that in the first graph the contemporaries' trendline is only two points away from his level in 1598. By 1604, however, he is ahead by some ten points on average, and by 1613 that difference between them has grown to twenty per hundred lines of verse. Part of what made Shakespeare's verse so much greater than the rest was this appreciation of just how much freedom the two techniques offered.

To sum up:

1) Whether we are talking about Elizabethan or Jacobean playwrights in general or about Shakespeare in particular, there is a very clear trend in which the use of open lines and feminine endings tended to increase throughout Shakespeare's lifetime.

2) All of the orthodox Shakespearean chronologies show ten or eleven plays written after Oxford's death.

3) Every one of the eleven plays considered here has a frequency of open lines plus feminine endings which is more than that of any other play ascribed to Shakespeare bar two. The median (midpoint) value of the figures for these plays is 64 per hundred lines of verse.

4) Of the plays listed by Francis Meres as having been written by 1598 - plus those missing from his list for which there is evidence of earlier performance by the Strange/Pembroke companies - every one of them other than The Merchant of Venice and 1 Henry IV has a frequency of open lines plus feminine endings which is less than any of the rest of the plays attributed to him other than The Merry Wives of Windsor. The median value for all of them is only 26 per hundred lines of verse.

5) No matter which of the various orthodox chronologies one chooses, there is a highly significant trend by which these figures increase over the years. However, as the reasoning explained in Gary Taylor's chronology shows,³ the high correlation of the figures with the dates is not due to the latter being based upon the former, which plays little or no part in how the dates are arrived at. So the clear trend adds considerable support to the orthodox datings being substantially correct.

6) This leaves Oxfordians with the following options.

• Find reasons for shifting every one of those ten or eleven plays back before 1604, and pretend that the resulting demolition of the trend doesn't matter.

• Shift the whole canon back the requisite amount in time, which would retain the trend, but then explain why Meres had inexplicably omitted most of Shakespeare's finest plays from his list.

• Create an entirely new chronology for the post-1598 plays which retains the trend, but squeezes all 23 of them into the six-year period between 1598 and 1604. Without any justification for the "new" dates being based either upon internal or external evidence, however, this would of course be cheating.

• Hope that nobody notices and that it will all just go away, or

• Think it possible that they just might be backing the wrong candidate?

Peter Farey

© Peter Farey, September 2009
  Emmerich Anonymous Shakespeare
Peter Farey, a founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society, is the 2007 recipient of the Calvin & Rose G. Hoffman Prize, administered annually by The King's School in Canterbury for a "distinguished publication on Christopher Marlowe." He was also a founding member (with Derek Jacobi) of the UK's National Youth Theatre. Click here to reach Peter's website.

Are Oxfordians backing the wrong candidate? Click here for Peter's fascinating analysis of how Marlowe compares with de Vere on Shakespeare authorship criteria.

¹Elliott, Ward and Robert Valenza. "And Then There Were None: Winnowing the Shakespeare Claimants." Computers and the Humanities 30, 1996. p.198.
²Ibid. pp.211-211. All of their counting was done by computer, and the authors acknowledge (p.215) that it is not as accurate as manual counting for feminine endings. For the present exercise, however, this is of less importance than having the same method used throughout.
³Taylor, Gary. "The Canon and Chronology of Shakespeare's Plays," in Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor et. al., William Shakespeare, A Textual Companion (1987, 1997). pp.81-2.

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The Wrong Candidate? by Peter Farey

Are Oxfordians backing the wrong candidate? Click here for a fascinating analysis of how Marlowe compares with de Vere on Shakespeare authorship criteria.

Click here for the blog's home page and recent content. Ian McKellen, Edward II, Godot

On Venus and Adonis by Samuel Blumenfeld

While I agree with Daryl Pinksen that Marlowe wrote Venus and Adonis, I don’t think it was written to try to convince the Earl of Southampton to marry. The first 17 of the famous Sonnets were, as Daryl and I believe, written by Marlowe at the behest of Lord Burghley to persuade Southampton to marry his granddaughter Elizabeth. Apparently the poems failed to do the job.

But I think Venus and Adonis tells a different story, one of seduction by an aggressive female of a reluctant handsome young man. And it is only when Venus becomes totally passive that Adonis becomes sufficiently aroused to make love to her.

If the thesis I put forth in my book is correct, Marlowe is telling us exactly what took place between him and Mary Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke. Of course, my thesis is pure speculation, but I believe that Marlowe was Philip Sidney’s page, engaged at the age of eight when in 1572 Sidney was embarking on his two-year tour of the Continent with a contingent of servants. I also believe that young Christopher stayed with Sidney until the age of fourteen when he entered the King’s School on Archbishop Parker’s scholarship.

During those six years in Sidney's employ, Marlowe traveled with the young nobleman and his servants all across Europe, was in Paris during the horrible St. Bartholomew massacre of the Huguenots, and on return to England remained with Sidney until 1578.

Apparently, Sidney’s sister Mary, two years older than Marlowe, became acquainted with her brother’s precocious page and recognized in him a highly intelligent, good looking, and personable young man with a talent for writing poetry.

At the age of fifteen, Mary Sidney married the elderly Second Earl of Pembroke, Henry Herbert, who had had two wives, neither of whom bore him an heir. After two years of marriage, it became clear to Mary and the Earl that he was infertile. But the Earl wanted an heir to carry forth the Pembroke earldom. The great problem that many noble titled families had was the lack of a male heir to carry forth the title.

The Earl no doubt told Mary that she had to get him an heir, and he didn’t care how she went about doing it. But she had to be discreet, careful, and secretive about the whole affair. Who was available to impregnate her? The most convenient candidate was her brother’s former page, now fifteen and attending the King’s School. He was perfect: a social nobody, and therefore no threat, but physically healthy, highly intelligent, virginal, and full of teenage testosterone. And he greatly admired Mary. How Mary arranged for them to meet and what took place at that meeting we can never know. What we do know is that the Third Earl of Pembroke, William Herbert, or W.H., was born on April 8, 1580.

Which means that it was in the summer of 1579 that Mary found a convenient time and place to seduce young Christopher. And there is every likelihood that, as a result of this highly charged first sexual experience, Marlowe not only considered it a privilege to contribute his blood to the Sidney-Pembroke line, but also fell in love with the Countess.

It is my contention that Venus and Adonis tells the story of that seduction by the aggressive Countess, the resistance of Adonis, and how he discovered that women aroused him when they became completely passive. Some men enjoy aggressive women, but apparently Marlowe did not. Thus in Hero and Leander, Leander is the aggressor.

The Countess went on to have three more children: Katherine, Anne, and Philip Herbert, the future Earl of Montgomery. Who were their fathers? The best candidate is the poet Samuel Daniel, the rival poet, who lived with the Countess, and served as a tutor to young William.

We do know that throughout her life Mary Sidney bore a terrible burden of sin because of her aroused sexual desires. In other words, it was the Second Earl of Pembroke who forced his young wife to become a latent nymphomaniac.

As for the dedication of Venus and Adonis to Southampton by the unknown Shakespeare, I believe it was done to give this highly erotic poem respectable and prestigious patronage. Marlowe undoubtedly knew Southampton, Burghley’s ward, and may have even tutored him at Cambridge, and it is quite likely that Southampton knew who the true author was.

G. K. Chesterton once wrote about political secrecy: “It is the thing most common to humanity that is most veiled by humanity. It is exactly because we all know that it is there that we need not say that it is there.” Perhaps this insight explains why secrets were so well kept during Elizabethan times. Chesterton says further: “We are asked to be silent about these things, but we are not asked to be ignorant about them.” (All Things Considered, New York, John Lane Co., 1910)

Samuel Blumenfeld

© Samuel Blumenfeld, September 2009

Samuel Blumenfeld, a regular contibutor to MSC, has authored more than ten books. His latest, The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection: A New Study of the Authorship Question, was published by McFarland. He is a former editor in the New York book publishing industry, and he has lectured in all 50 U.S. states. His writings have appeared in such diverse publications as Esquire, Reason, Education Digest, Vital Speeches of the Day, Boston, and many others.

A recent anecdote Sam related to me from his fascinating life experiences: "I did meet Ayn Rand when I was editor at Grosset & Dunlap. Took her to lunch. I then attended the Objectivist lectures given by her protege Nathaniel Branden. Rand would come at the end of each lecture and answer questions. After the lecture, a group of us would retire to the bar in the hotel for further dicussion. Alan Greenspan was part of that group. Of course, Rand later broke off with Branden because he was in love with a younger woman."

See Sam on YouTube addressing the Shakespeare authorship controversy.

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Christopher Marlowe in Boston Globe

"If Marlovians seem more jovial than de Vere’s promoters, that is because 'Kit' Marlowe was cool," writes Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam. Click here for the fun September 25 article "The Shakespeare Truthers."

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Nicholas Skeres & the Earl of Essex by Peter Farey

At one point in Michael Rubbo's 2002 documentary Much Ado About Something, Rubbo is in Jonathan Bate's garden discussing with him the Marlowe "faked death" scenario at Deptford. Energetically "digging in" some compost, Bate protests, "But what it presupposes is that the three men in the room were all in on the plot to save him." "But of course they were," says Rubbo. "They were all employees of..." With some frustration Bate interrupts him: "But they weren't - they were with rival factions!" "That's what Nicholl says," Rubbo replies, "but that's very disputed." And that's pretty much where the discussion is left.

Yet Bate was making an important point, and it is one which Marlovians ignore at their peril. The Queen's favourite Essex had only recently been appointed to the Privy Council, and was viewed with the greatest mistrust and suspicion by the Cecils - Lord Burghley and his son Sir Robert Cecil - both of them also on the Council. As for Essex, he was waiting for the old man to die so that he could take over as the Queen's chief minister. A fierce, but civil, rivalry might best describe their relationship at this time.

Robert Poley was quite clearly working on the Cecil side of that divide, and Nicholas Skeres, having certainly served Essex in the past, had described him as his "Lord and Master" only a month earlier. Ingram Frizer wasn't really connected with either, although he was very closely associated with Thomas Walsingham, formerly employed by his father's cousin, the late spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, and it would be generally agreed that he was on the Cecil side of the Cecil/Essex split. Thomas Walsingham and Sir Robert Cecil are known to have been good friends later.

All three of them being there in the first place really makes no sense unless we assume that they were in some way representing their masters' interests. Marlovians believe that the most logical reason for their presence was to fake Marlowe's death on their masters' behalf, but this assumes Skeres to have been there in his capacity as a confidence trickster working for Frizer (and Walsingham?) rather than as a servant of Essex. That he so obviously was Essex's man does weaken the argument quite a lot - the point Jonathan Bate was making.

Fortunately for the Marlovian argument, however, an undated letter from Skeres to Essex's confidant Gelly Meyrick discovered by Paul Hammer¹ among the Devereux Papers at Longleat (MS.1, fol.306) casts considerable doubt upon his having still been with Essex at the end of May 1593, when Marlowe's apparent death occurred.

In this letter - "to my most esteemed friend Gelly Meyrick" - Skeres writes (the spelling modernized):

Sir, it is long since I made choice of your friendship, and that I have found you no more readier to do me good, hath (I think) rather proceded of my own negligence than your fault. Of which negligences I have in the wrong done to myself paid the price. But now I return to my self that have been long a stranger to my self, and do lay upon the love it hath pleased you to bear me, with this request to avoke your thoughts to help me in my present suit to my Lord [of Essex] which is for some employment and charge in these affairs that are now in hand which suit (being the only stay of my fortune and the readiest means for me to recover my umbered blemish) I present to you in his Lordship's favour to make me happy, and I shall be ready to do any service to the authors of my benefit. And though I have heretofore forsaken the ways of my good, I am so tired with those walks, as all my labour shall be spent to redress my life. Good Mr Meyrick respect my long service and travail the which I hope will not be so cast off and be now as ready to pleasure me as you have been willing before to show desire. I hope of your good will, I doubt not of your power, vowing if in this you make me happy to acknowledge you the only original and means of my good during life. Thus bending all my good in your goodness towards me, I wish you the happiness of your desires.

From this, we learn the following:

1. He has done long and arduous service for Essex in the past. In 1589 Skeres had carried messages between Essex, who was in Exeter, and Sir Francis Walsingham in London after Essex's return from Portugal. Whether he was actually working for Essex at the time is not certain, however, given that it was Walsingham who paid him, and that he had apparently been one of Walsingham's men involved in the discovery of the Babington Plot three years earlier. "He quietly drops from the story, almost certainly because he was Walsingham's man all along" as Charles Nicholl puts it.² The "long service and travail" he is referring to here, however, clearly means Essex's failed expedition to Normandy in 1591/2 when, having started with 4000 men in August 1591, the force lost about three quarters of them either from sickness or enemy action. Skeres managed to survive nevertheless, and returned some months after Essex in August the following year.

2. He regrets the way he has spent his life in the past, and is determined to put it right from now on. In 1593 he was thirty. He had been employed at the dishonest end of the money lending-business from his early teens and was still involved in it. So it seems very likely that it is this practice he means by having "forsaken the ways of his good," and that it is this life which he now intends to "redress," meaning that the letter was most probably written after May/June 1593.

3. He has become estranged from Essex because of something he did which damaged his image in Essex's eyes. Nicholl (p.438) and Hammer (p.228) come up with only two suggestions as to what this might have been: the Deptford incident of May 30,1593, or Skeres's appearance before the Star Chamber Court a month earlier. In the first of these he was apparently only a witness to what went on, and it is difficult to see what might have offended Essex unless what happened was the very opposite of what he had wanted - but there is little if any reason to suspect that Essex had any interest in Marlowe at that time, whether alive or dead! In the latter, Skeres had been summoned before the Star Chamber Court because of his having worked for ten years or more as an "instrument" to draw victims into the clutches of the loan shark John Wolfall. Nicholl plays this down as a possible cause of the disfavour, but unsurprisingly fails to mention that if this were the event in question his whole Essex-based thesis as to what happened (both the 1992 and 2002 versions) would be in ruins. What neither he nor Hammer mentions either is that the Earl of Essex himself was a member of the Star Chamber Court, and may of course have taken exception to someone "before the Star Chamber for extortion" as Hammer put it, drawing attention to the fact that Essex was his "Lord and Master." As a new member, his image mattered.

4. He is asking for support from Meyrick in his suit to Essex for employment in the "affairs that are now in hand." Both Nicholl and Hammer suggest that the affairs in question might be Essex's preparations for his Cadiz expedition of 1596. Nicholl has some reservations about this, however, saying that the word "affairs" does not seem quite right for a military expedition. He has obviously forgotten Richard II, in which the King uses the word twice with precisely that meaning, one even saying "affairs in hand."³ He floats the possibility of it being the so-called Lopez affair Skeres had in mind, but gives no indication of how Skeres would have known about it, nor how Meyrick would have known it was this he was talking about. The "affairs that are now in hand" are probably military ones, but the reference seems to be more general than just the Cadiz campaign, and Essex's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) may give us a clue.

Essex therefore threw himself into military administration, the appointment of army officers, intelligence-gathering, and an ever-growing number of foreign correspondences - areas of often frenetic activity which reflected his conviction that confronting Spain was England's most urgent task and which provided him with a steady supply of the political ammunition which he needed to impress this view upon a reluctant queen...Although Essex took over correspondence with Florence (through James Guicciardini) in 1593 and invested much time and money in intelligence-gathering from 1592, the full extent of his ambition to become a statesman of truly international significance emerged only in 1595.

It was these preparations that must have been fairly widely known and which Skeres most probably had in mind rather than any specific project, about which public knowledge would have been very limited indeed.

5. Since it is addressed to "Gellie Mericke" and he refers to "Mr Mireke" in the text, it must have been written before Meyrick was knighted in the summer of 1596. Skeres was also arrested and released in March 1595 when the record describes him as a "servant" of Essex, which suggests a date before this too, although this is something he may well have claimed on the basis of his long service even if he was still out of favour and being given no work to do. One is reminded of the imprisoned Christopher Marlowe claiming in Flushing to be well known to Lord Strange and the Earl of Northumberland, whilst almost certainly actually working for Lord Burghley at the time.

Given that Skeres had apparently done long service for Essex up until April 1593, and that the estrangement occurred "long since" some time before 1596, it seems highly likely that as a result of Skeres's Star Chamber appearance, Essex let it be known that he was displeased at having his name associated with that of a usurer's tout, and would prefer Skeres not to have the chance to do so again. The Star Chamber hearing was in April 1593 and the letter must have been written a year or two later, before Meyrick's knighthood in 1596 but after a sufficient time for the falling out to have happened "long since." And if this is so, then Skeres's presence at Deptford only a month later will have had nothing to do with Essex - even if he was brought back into the Essex fold later on, which his imprisonment following the executions of Essex and Meyrick might suggest.

We cannot say that this is certain, but it is undoubtedly very probable indeed, and enough for it to be no longer possible for people like Jonathan Bate to claim with any confidence that Poley and Skeres were with "rival factions" and therefore most unlikely to have collaborated on something like the faking of Marlowe's death.

Peter Farey

© Peter Farey, September 2009

Peter Farey, a founding member of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society, is the 2007 recipient of the Calvin & Rose G. Hoffman Prize, administered annually by The King's School in Canterbury for a "distinguished publication on Christopher Marlowe." He has been manning the Marlovian barricades on the internet for the past 11 years, with over 4000 posts to internet newsgroups in that time, mostly about the Marlovian theory. Click here to reach Peter's website.

¹Hammer, Paul E.J. "A Reckoning Reframed: the 'Murder' of Christopher Marlowe Revisited." English Literary Renaissance 26.2, 1996, p.242.
²Nicholl, Charles. The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe. London: Vintage, 2002. p.32.
³Richard II. 1.4.46-51.

We will ourself in person to this war,
And for our coffers with too great a court
And lib'ral largess are grown somewhat light,
We are enforc'd to farm our royal realm,
The revenue whereof shall furnish us
For our affairs in hand.

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On Concord Shakespeare Fest by Samuel Blumenfeld

A few weeks ago I attended an exhilarating Shakespeare conference in Concord, Massachusetts (July 31 - August 2), organized by Stuart Weeks, an Oxfordian who urged me, a Marlovian, to attend. This second annual Shakespeare festival was entitled, “Much Ado About Shakespeare – A Festive Conference.”

All of the Oxfordian conferences I’ve attended in the last year or so have had little to do about Edward de Vere and more to do with the works of Shakespeare. And now that my book has been published, I have been warmly accepted as the Marlovian in the crowd.

I have been told by Stuart that I will be able to give a Marlovian presentation at next year’s conference. That is real progress. While he organizes next year’s presenters, I will acquaint him with Daryl Pinksen and other wonderful contributors to this blog.

There were presenters from England, Minneapolis, Colorado, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Boston. All of the presentations were of high professional quality. There was music and dance by Maren and Alan Stott of England. A fascinating talk on the history of money, “Shakespeare: The Monetary Backdrop,” given by Richard Kotlarz of Minneapolis. As a result of the talk, I now see the Merchant of Venice in a different light. It is not an anti-Semitic play. It is a play about economics and money. And that also holds true for the Jew of Malta, which I suggested he read.

Lida McGirr, an actress, put on a wonderful show depicting the successive states of Margaret’s personality in the Henry VI trilogy: virgin, wife, mother, crone, and old woman. Since I, and many orthodox scholars, believe that Marlowe wrote the trilogy, Lida’s performance revealed the great genius of the playwright in his ability to create such a fascinating woman.

No doubt the most Oxfordian presentation at the conference was Hank Whittemore’s engrossing performance in which he asserted that the Earl of Oxford had an affair with Queen Elizabeth which resulted in the birth of the Earl of Southampton, or Henry IX. Whittemore quoted from the Sonnets, “written by Oxford,” which was to prove the truth of the story. And he connected all of that with the Essex rebellion, Southampton’s imprisonment, and later pardon by James. It made excellent theater, but since the basic premise is sheer fantasy, I enjoyed it with a large grain of Marlovian salt.

There was a very good presentation on “Shakespeare’s Women: Why Do They Have to Die?” Plus, two very stimulating talks on Shakespeare and music.

Kudos to Stuart Weeks, who managed to create a conference with something for everyone via a great variety of talents and subject matter. If, as expected, I am able to give a presentation on Christopher Marlowe next year, 2010’s Shakespeare festival will be even more exhilarating.

Samuel Blumenfeld

© Samuel Blumenfeld, August 2009

Samuel Blumenfeld, a World War II veteran of the Italian campaign, has authored more than ten books. His latest, The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection: A New Study of the Authorship Question, was published by McFarland. He is a former editor in the New York book publishing industry and has lectured widely. His writings have appeared in such diverse publications as Esquire, Reason, Education Digest, Vital Speeches of the Day, Boston, and many others. He is a regular contributor to MSC.

See Sam on YouTube addressing the authorship controversy.

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The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society

"Our Belief is that Christopher Marlowe – in his day England's greatest playwright – did not die in 1593 but survived to write most of what is now assumed to be the work of William Shakespeare. Our Plan is to present accurate information and well-reasoned argument related to this belief. Our Aim is to have this theory accepted by Shakespearian scholars and others as the only plausible alternative to the traditional 'Stratfordian’ position.”

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Who Wrote Venus and Adonis, and Why? by Daryl Pinksen

There has always been some mystery surrounding the writing of Venus and Adonis. Why was it written? What was the poet's connection to the Earl of Southampton? Did Shakespeare really write it? In 1593, his name was not known as a poet. From what we can infer from his life after 1593, he was an actor and aspiring entrepreneur, connected in some way to the theater industry, but he was not a scholar, and not then a gentleman, which makes the sophistication of the work¹ so remarkable.

Venus and Adonis is a beautiful poem, with an effusive dedication, but – its exquisite verse aside – there is general agreement that the poem was written with a specific purpose in mind. It delivered a message to the Earl of Southampton, to try and nudge him toward an arranged marriage that, as everyone knew, he had stubbornly refused for three years. If William Shakespeare was indeed its author, how did this virtual nobody decide to write a poem, one requiring months of intense concentration,² that dared to be so bold with a young Earl?

The time involved, hundreds of hours, was too great for the poet to have written the poem on speculation. He would have needed financial support during its creation. And its message was too specific, and too well known to have been against the wishes of its dedicatee, to have been crafted with the hope of reward from Southampton. The impetus and the financing must have come from elsewhere. One explanation, as suggested by Stephen Greenblatt in his 2005 biography, Will in the World, is that:

It is possible that someone . . . had taken note of the fact that the young earl was excited by the talents or by the person of an actor who was also a promising poet. Whoever noticed this excitement . . . might well have had the clever idea of commissioning the poet to try his hand at persuading the narcissistic, effeminate young earl to marry.³

In order to determine if this explanation is credible, we need to explore the context within which the poem was written.

When Southampton's father (the 2nd Earl of Southampton) died, William Cecil⁴ – Lord Burghley – the most powerful of the Queen's ministers, and Master of the Wards, became his legal guardian. This gave Burghley full control over the young Earl's properties and inheritances. Until he reached the age of twenty-one, Lord Burghley would oversee, and profit, from the Earl’s interests, while Southampton would have to make do with a modest allowance. As Southampton’s guardian, the wardship also gave Burghley the right to impose a marriage contract on him.

Burghley had been born a commoner, but as the Queen’s most trusted minister he had grown steadily in wealth, influence, and power. When Southampton came to live at his estate, Burghley was the most powerful man in England. The one thing he lacked was a noble lineage for his offspring, so he used his position to make this a reality. In 1571, he saw to it that one of his earlier wards, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was married to his daughter Anne Cecil. That union resulted in a granddaughter for Lord Burghley, the Lady Elizabeth Vere.

In 1590 or thereabouts, when Southampton reached the age of 17, Lord Burghley arranged a marriage between his young charge and Lady Elizabeth. Southampton knew the contract was legally binding, and he knew the possible consequences of refusing, but he wanted no part of it. Like Adonis, he preferred to remain a bachelor, saying – with respect – that it was not the lady he objected to, but the idea of marriage itself. He was, after all, only seventeen.

In 1593, the year Venus and Adonis was published, the Earl of Southampton had been under pressure from Lord Burghley for several years, but he had not budged. It was not that he lacked fear - he knew that if he did not fulfill the marriage contract by his twenty-first birthday, Lord Burghley had the right to impose a crippling fine on his estate. Neither was Burghley’s blatant conflict of interest an impediment – it was he who held the power to determine the fine’s amount in cases of breached marriage contracts. But Southampton had made up his mind and thought, wrongly it turns out, that he could persuade Burghley to back down.

The potential fine, and its imagined size, was pressure enough. But, as Southampton’s guardian, another of the threats Burghley could use to try and force his ward to obey his wishes was to neglect Southampton’s properties in the final years of his wardship, leaving his estates and financial interests in shambles. This was not an idle threat, and Southampton was worried. As Akrigg tells us in his 1968 book, Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton:

In 1592 we have an alarmed young Earl writing to Michael Hicks, Burghley's confidential servant, asking him to use his influence with Burghley, to avoid 'the greate decay and daunger' which threatened much of his inheritance through lack of maintenance.⁵

When Southampton finally did reach the age of majority, on October 6, 1594, he had still not fulfilled Burghley's marriage contract. As punishment for his disobedience, Burghley imposed a fine of ₤5000, then a staggering sum (a well-paid schoolmaster might earn a yearly salary of ₤20). To twist the knife, Burghley demanded payment immediately, forcing Southampton to borrow at interest.

When Venus and Adonis was published in June 1593, Southampton had just over a year left to fulfill Burghley’s contract. Venus and Adonis tells the tale of a young man who is desired by the goddess of Love, but spurns her advances, preferring the bachelor’s life. The story ends in tragedy, with Adonis killed by a boar, leaving Venus to lament the loss. Everyone in the know understood the message being sent to Southampton was, “Change your mind, and give in to Burghley's demands.”

It is hard to imagine that the writer of the poem believed it would be enthusiastically received by Southampton. Despite the flattery of the dedication, and the beauty of the poetry, the writer must have known that the message delivered by the poem was against Southampton's wishes. To Southampton, it would have represented more unwanted pressure. Under the circumstances it seems unlikely that its author would have written and published this poem without the bidding, or at least the blessing, of Lord Burghley, the person to whom it mattered the most that the poem achieve its intended result.

So how did its writer end up being given this task? Fortunately, there is a precedent which may help us answer that question. Venus and Adonis was not the first poem dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. In 1591, a Latin poem was published by a poet named John Clapham with a dutiful dedication to the Earl of Southampton. The poem’s title? Narcissus, the story of a young man who becomes so enthralled with his own image that he drowns while trying to find his fading reflection in a pool.

Clapham’s purpose was on full display in the poem, as Katherine Duncan-Jones tells us: “Clapham’s fairly undistinguished poem scarcely veils its propaganda purpose. In its echos sequence, for instance, line 17’s echo word is ‘vere’ no doubt alluding to Elizabeth Vere.”⁶ How would Southampton have received Clapham’s blunt message? Not well, one would think. To be called a Narcissus was hardly a compliment, and who did this John Clapham think he was, lecturing his superior? John Clapham, as it turns out, had nothing to fear from Southampton – he served a much more powerful, much richer, master. Clapham was a secretary of Lord Burghley. The message being delivered was Burghley’s, not Clapham’s. As Akrigg tells us:

The usual motive for a dedication, a handsome reward from the dedicatee, could not be looked for from seventeen-year-old Southampton, living on a pitifully small ‘exhibition’. It would be Burghley, gratified at seeing the treatment given the wretched young nobleman, who would supply Clapham with his reward.⁷

The message was Burghley’s, the reward was from Burghley; all that Clapham did was provide the medium. The poet was communicating Burghley’s wishes, not his own, and certainly not Southampton’s.⁸ Whoever wrote Venus and Adonis, although Burghley’s direct involvement cannot be proven, was performing the same service as Clapham.

And there exists the possibility that this was not the first time that the writer of Venus and Adonis had tried to persuade the young Earl to marry. When Shakespeare’s Sonnets was published in 1609, there was no preface from the poet, and no patron was named. Instead, the printer, one Thomas Thorpe, included a cryptic dedication to a “Mr. W.H.”, whose identity remains a mystery. The sonnets variously deal with a rival poet, one or perhaps several patrons, and a mysterious dark lady. The sonnets do not seem to be arranged in any kind of order. And while many of the poems sound like personal reflections on real situations with real people, none of the characters have been positively identified.

There is one sequence of sonnets, however, that appears to have been deliberately grouped. The first seventeen of the 154 Shakespeare’s Sonnets praise a young man’s beauty, and urge him to marry and procreate. The theme is so similar to Clapham’s Narcissus, and to Venus and Adonis, that there is wide agreement that the young man – at least in these first seventeen sonnets – was the Earl of Southampton. The fact that there are seventeen poems in the sequence, all with the same theme, suggests that they may have been commissioned specifically for Southampton’s seventeenth birthday in 1590.

The theme repeated throughout the first seventeen sonnets is insistent – marry and produce children. Although we cannot be sure which was written first, the writer of the first seventeen sonnets writes as if he were familiar with Clapham’s poem and is responding to it, but chooses a more subtle and ingenious path. Where Clapham’s Narcissus suggests that Southampton’s love of himself (he was, by all accounts, a striking young man) was a vice that, if uncorrected, would lead to his ruin, the sonneteer accepts the dedicatee’s self-love, and presents it in a novel way, not as impediment, but as the driving force behind the need to procreate.

The poet is gentler with Southampton than Clapham, more conscious of the psychology of privileged youth. He seeks to persuade Southampton through flattery. Where Narcissus gazed into a reflecting pool and became so enthralled with himself that he drowned, the sonneteer suggests that the love of one’s own image is natural, and rather than curb it, should be given full rein, leading naturally to the desire to re-create that image in a son:

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another. (Sonnet III, 1-2)

The poet reflects that time and age are enemies of life and beauty, but they can be cheated through producing an heir, in effect giving one’s youthful image a second life:

Die single, and thine image dies with thee. (Sonnet III, 14)

Thy unused beauty must be tomb’d with thee . . . (Sonnet IV, 13)

In the spring of 1593, the writer of Venus and Adonis is still conscious of Clapham’s poem, as Akrigg continues:

The text of Venus and Adonis supplies evidence that Shakespeare knew Clapham’s poem. The basic pattern is the same: the meeting with Venus, the departure of the young man, Venus’s lamentation, and the final metamorphosis – in Clapham’s poem into a narcissus, in Shakespeare’s into an anemone.⁹

Clapham’s Narcissus, Shakespeare’s first seventeen sonnets, and Venus and Adonis all perform the same function: to try and persuade Southampton to marry. And not to marry just anyone – he must marry Lady Elizabeth Vere and produce children with her, as Lord Burghley had commanded.

The writer of Venus and Adonis was most likely someone in Burghley’s circle; someone over whom he had influence; someone who could be relied upon to deliver verse of the highest quality, preferably someone whom Southampton was familiar with and respected. Shakespeare, as far as we know, had no association with Lord Burghley either before or after Venus and Adonis was published. But Christopher Marlowe did.

Marlowe had been recruited into the intelligence network at Cambridge, while Lord Burghley was Chancellor of the University. Marlowe's and Southampton’s time at Cambridge overlapped between 1585 and 1587, when Marlowe was emerging as the nation’s most promising new poet. It is safe to assume that Marlowe and his work were well known to Southampton.

In 1587, when Marlowe was denied his M.A. because of rumours of Catholic leanings, and his frequent absences, the Privy Council, led by Lord Burghley, wrote a letter praising Marlowe for doing his country good service, dismissed all rumours against him as unfounded, and ordered the Cambridge Dons to bestow upon Marlowe his degree without delay. When Marlowe was arrested for “coining” in Flushing, Netherlands, in 1592, on a mission to expose Catholic plots against the Crown, Marlowe and his accuser (the now infamous Richard Baines) were sent back to Lord Burghley, by then the head of the intelligence network after assuming the role upon the death of Sir Francis Walsingham in 1590.

Like Clapham, Marlowe was in Lord Burghley’s employ. Lord Burghley knew Christopher Marlowe, both as poet and spy. But if Marlowe did write Venus and Adonis, this would still require an explanation of why his name does not appear on the dedication page.

Venus and Adonis had been registered at the Stationer’s Company, without attribution, on April 18, 1593, a little over a month before Marlowe's arrest on May 20. On May 30, Marlowe had his fateful meeting at Deptford, where he was either killed, or escaped into exile with the help of his friends. About two weeks later, Venus and Adonis was published, now with an author's name attached to the dedication. The occasion marked the first appearance of William Shakespeare's name as a writer – but Marlowe’s fingerprints are all over it.

A similar Ovidian poem by Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander, assumed to have been written before Venus and Adonis, but not published until four years later in 1597, is often cited as an influence on Shakespeare when he wrote Venus and Adonis. John Bakeless argued that “Hero and Leander influenced Shakespeare directly and powerfully when he was writing Venus and Adonis¹⁰. . . . Shakespeare had read Hero and Leander since he quotes from it, since his scheme and treatment are essentially similar in Venus and Adonis.”¹¹

Jonathan Bate, in discussing the poet George Chapman’s later additions to Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, completed in 1597, seems to feel that Chapman did not do a fair job. His opinion is that “in its playful sprightliness . . . Venus and Adonis was a far truer continuation of Hero and Leander than Chapman’s additions.”¹² Scholarship on Venus and Adonis must assume that Shakespeare had access to Marlowe’s unpublished Hero and Leander, even though no one else seems to have known it existed.

Between April 18, when Venus and Adonis was registered, and June of 1593, when the poem was published, much had changed for Marlowe’s once good name. He had been arrested on suspicion of heresy, and the “Baines Note” of Marlowe’s blasphemies, delivered days later, had administered the coup de grace on his reputation. Whether Marlowe was alive or dead in June 1593, publishing Venus and Adonis with Christopher Marlowe's name on it was no longer an option. It would have associated Southampton's name with a now despised atheist, heretic, and blasphemer. And for Burghley, this would have meant associating his (or so he thought) future grandson-in-law's, and granddaughter’s, names with Marlowe, a name that he correctly predicted would live in infamy. He would not have permitted this to happen.

The poet also supplied an epigram beneath the title which hints at his identity and circumstance. The Latin couplet,

Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus Apollo
Pocula Castalia plene ministret aqua.

from the Roman poet Ovid’s Amores (1.15), had been translated several years earlier, by Christopher Marlowe. The epigram, as translated by Marlowe, read:

Let base-conceited wits admire vile things,
Fair Phoebus lead me to the Muses’ springs.

Readers of Ovid would have immediately been reminded of the theme of the poem that the epigram was lifted from: a poet’s defiance of death through the immortality of verse. If Marlowe had indeed escaped into exile the previous month, and not been killed (as was claimed in the coroner’s report), then the decision to include a quote from Ovid’s Amores, Elegy 15, was a perfect choice. Inviting his readers to recall how book one of Amores ends, the epigram on the title page of Venus and Adonis would have been the perfect announcement of the “first heir of Marlowe’s invention” as a dead man:

Then though death rakes my bones in funeral fire,
I’ll live, and as he pulls me down, mount higher.

Marlowe’s ruined name was no longer an option for Venus and Adonis, but why William Shakespeare’s? Printing the poem and dedication with no author’s name attached may have been regarded as an admission that the author was a persona non grata, and so a name would have been needed, but why him?

The man assigned the job of printing Venus and Adonis was Richard Field, a printer well known to Lord Burghley. Field began his career by publishing Lord Burghley’s The Copy of a Letter Sent out of England to Don Bernadin Mendoza in 1588. And there is further evidence that there were close connections between the two men. In 1589, Richard Field dedicated Puttenham’s Art of English Poesy to Lord Burghley.¹³

Richard Field was a native of Stratford, just a few years older than William Shakespeare, and his family and the Shakespeares were close. As David Kathman summarizes in his online essay, “Shakespeare and Richard Field”:

I think we can be virtually certain that William Shakespeare and Richard Field knew each other from childhood, and it's entirely reasonable to think that the relationship continued when they were both living in London.¹⁴

Shakespeare, as expertly illustrated in an article by Anthony Kellett,¹⁵ was a canny businessman who knew an opportunity when he saw it, and he knew how to capitalize on those opportunities. As a shareholder in a theater company, providing his name as a front for Marlowe – London’s premier playwright – had the potential to net huge profits. The details are unknowable, but we do know one thing: we can draw a direct line from Marlowe, through Lord Burghley, to Richard Field, and from him, to Shakespeare.

Understanding the historical background of Venus and Adonis is vitally important, because its registration and publication straddle the period between Marlowe’s reign as the greatest poet in England, and his subsequent pariah status as heretic and atheist. The simultaneous emergence of William Shakespeare as a name associated with poetry and drama, work universally described as being heavily influenced by Christopher Marlowe, appears to be no coincidence.

Daryl Pinksen

© Daryl Pinksen, August 2009

Daryl Pinksen, a regular MSC contributor, is the author of Marlowe's Ghost, Grand Prize Winner of the 17th Annual Writer's Digest International Self-Published Book Awards.

¹“The poem is so smartly attuned to London literary fashions of the early 1590s that it must have been written if not in London, then in its literary atmosphere.” Burrow, Colin, ed. 2002. The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Sonnets and Poems. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.8.
²“There is every reason to think that Venus and Adonis was the product of unusually careful and studied labour. It may have taken a considerable time to perfect, perhaps between six and ten months.” Duncan-Jones, Katherine. 2001. Ungentle Shakespeare. London: Thomson Learning, p.60.
³Greenblatt, Stephen. 2004. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, p.229-30.
⁴See Graves, Michael A.R. 1998. Burghley: William Cecil, Lord Burghley. London: Addison-Wesley.
⁵Akrigg, G.P.V. 1968. Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p.32-3.
⁶Duncan-Jones, p.64.
⁷Akrigg, p. 34.
⁸ The Oxfordian claim that “only someone of equal or greater social standing to Southampton would dare to write a poem which treated the Earl like a disobedient child,” is hereby debunked. John Clapham did exactly that. He was a secretary.
⁹Akrigg, p.196.
¹⁰Bakeless, John. 1942. The Tragical History of Christopher Marlowe (Vol.2). Hamden, CT: Archon Books, p.263.
¹¹Bakeless, p. 293.
¹²Bate, Jonathan. 1997. The Genius of Shakespeare. London: Macmillan, p. 131.
¹³Burrow, p.12.
¹⁴See “Shakespeare and Richard Field,” at
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/field.html, accessed July 11 2009.
¹⁵See “William Shakespeare, Businessman – Forgotten genius,” at
http://marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com/2009/07/william-shakespeare-businessman.html, accessed July 11, 2009.




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