Talk:Shakespeare authorship question/sandbox 3

Collage of the 4 major alternative candidates for the authorship of Shakespeare's works, surrounding the Folio engraving of Shakespeare of Stratford. Clockwise from top left: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby and Christopher Marlowe.

The Shakespeare authorship question is the controversy about whether the works traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were actually composed by another writer or group of writers. The public debate dates back to the mid-19th century. It has attracted wide attention and a thriving following, including some prominent public figures, but is dismissed by the great majority of academic Shakespeare scholars.^[a] Those who question the attribution believe that "William Shakespeare" was a pen name used by the true author (or authors) to keep the writer's identity secret. Of the numerous proposed candidates, major nominees include Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who currently attracts the most widespread support, statesman Francis Bacon, dramatist Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, who—along with Oxford and Bacon—is often associated with various "group" theories.

Authorship doubters note the many evidentiary gaps in Shakespeare of Stratford's biography, and believe if he was involved at all, it was more likely as front man or play-broker. Skeptics such as Charlton Ogburn and John Michell believe he lacked the extensive education necessary to write the collected works, which display a comprehensive knowledge of classical literature, law and foreign languages, and writers such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Henry James question how he could have gained the life experience and adopted the aristocratic attitude that is evident in them. In an approach which has its foundation in biographical criticism, many authorship researchers focus on the relationship between the content of the plays and poems, and a candidate’s known education, life experiences, and recorded history.

The hypothesis has at times attracted a great deal of public attention, but remains essentially without support among Shakespeare scholars and literary historians, who for the most part pay little attention to it.^[b] Scholars point out that both the First Folio and the Stratford monument bear witness to a correlation between the theatrical author and Shakespeare of Stratford. They also note that scarcity of biographical data is normal for for this period. John Carey, in Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: new directions in biography, asserts that using biographical data to interpret works of literature is often invalid. According to noted Shakespearean experts Jonathan Bate and Harold Love, title pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and official records are also cited to support the mainstream view.

Despite the lack of mainstream support, the subject has gained a highly visible assortment of supporters including independent scholars, theatre professionals and a small minority of academics. They campaign assiduously to gain public acceptance of the authorship question as a legitimate field of academic inquiry and to promote one or another of the various authorship candidates through publications, organizations, online discussion groups and conferences.^[c]

Overview

For the purposes of this article the term “Shakespeare” is taken to mean the poet and playwright who wrote the plays and poems in question; and the term “Shakespeare of Stratford” is taken to mean the William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon to whom authorship is credited.

Minority view

An important principle for many of those who question Shakespeare of Stratford’s authorship is the belief that most authors reveal themselves in their work, and that the life experience and personality of an author can generally be discerned from his or her writings. With this principle in mind, many authorship doubters find parallels in the fictional characters or events in the Shakespearean works and in the life experiences of their preferred candidate. They also find a disparity between the biography of Shakespeare of Stratford and the content of Shakespeare's works, raising doubts about whether the author and the Stratford businessman are the same person.

Anti-Stratfordian Mark Twain, wrote "Is Shakespeare Dead?" shortly before his death in 1910.

This perceived dissonance, first expressed in the first half of the 19th century, has led many authorship doubters to look for alternative explanations. Notable figures who have expressed criticism include Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Mortimer J. Adler, John Galsworthy, and Tyrone Guthrie, among others. More recently, Supreme Court Justices Harry A. Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, and Sandra Day O'Conner, and prominent Shakespearean actors John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance have all expressed skepticism. In September 2007, the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition sponsored a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" to encourage new research into the question of Shakespeare's authorship, which has been signed by more than 1,700 people, including over 300 academics.

Some doubters, such as independent researcher Diana Price, and Oxfordian researcher Charlton Ogburn, Jr., have asserted there is no direct evidence clearly identifying Shakespeare of Stratford as a playwright, and that the majority of references to "William Shakespeare" by contemporaries refer to the author, not necessarily the Stratford businessman. Price asserts that for a professional author, Shakespeare of Stratford seems to have been entirely uninterested in protecting his work. Price explains that while he had a well-documented habit of going to court over relatively small sums, he never sued any of the publishers pirating his plays and sonnets, or took any legal action regarding their practice of attaching his name to the inferior output of others. Price also notes there is no evidence Shakespeare of Stratford was ever paid for writing, and his detailed will failed to mention any of Shakespeare's unpublished plays or poems or any of the source books Shakespeare was known to have read.

Ogburn also questioned why, when Shakespeare of Stratford died, he was not publicly mourned. Mark Twain wrote, in Is Shakespeare Dead?, "When Shakespeare died in Stratford it was not an event. It made no more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theater-actor would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting poems, no eulogies, no national tears — there was merely silence, and nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened when Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh, and the other literary folk of Shakespeare’s time passed from life! No praiseful voice was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years before he lifted his."

While the great majority of the academic community continues to endorse the traditional attribution, the authorship question has achieved some degree of acceptance as a legitimate research topic. In late 2007, Brunel University of London began offering a one-year MA program on the Shakespeare authorship question,and in 2010, Concordia University (Portland, Oregon) opened a multi-million dollar Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre, under the direction of authorship doubter Daniel Wright, a Shakespeare scholar and Concordia's professor of English.

Mainstream view

Main article: William Shakespeare

John Shakespeare's house, believed to be Shakespeare's birthplace, in Stratford-upon-Avon.

The mainstream view, overwhelming supported by academic Shakespeareans, is that the author known as "Shakespeare" was the same William Shakespeare who was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, moved to London and became an actor and sharer (part-owner) of the Lord Chamberlain's Men acting company (later the King's Men) that owned the Globe Theatre and the Blackfriars Theatre in London and owned exclusive rights to produce Shakespeare's plays from 1594 on, and who became entitled to use the honourific of gentleman when his father, John Shakespeare, was granted a coat of arms in 1596.

According to the traditional attribution, William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon is identified with the writer by at least four pieces of contemporary evidence that firmly link the two: (1) His will registers bequests to fellow actors and theatrical entrepreneurs, two of whom edited his works, namely (Heminges and Condell); (2) His village church monument bears an inscription linking him with Virgil and Socrates; (3) Ben Jonson linked the writer with the Stratford territory, in calling him the 'Swan of Avon'; and (4) Leonard Digges, in verses prefixed to the First Folio, speaks of the author's 'Stratford Monument'.

Mainstream critics such as Scott McCrea maintain that certain anti-Stratfordian approaches for establishing an alternative candidate, such as finding coded messages and cryptograms embedded in the works, or creating conspiracy theories, are both unreliable and unscholarly. This, they argue, explains why so many candidates, calculated as high as 56, have been nominated as the author. Shakespearean scholar Jonathan Bate asserts that the idea that Shakespeare revealed himself in his work is a Romantic notion of the 18th and 19th centuries, applied anachronistically to Elizabethan and Jacobean writers.

Orthodox scholars including Harold Love say that no alternative theory satisfactorily accounts for the positive contemporary evidence documenting Shakespeare’s authorship—title pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and official records—and the lack of any such supporting evidence for any other author. Terence Schoone-Jongen, writing in Shakespeare's companies: William Shakespeare's Early Career and the Acting Companies, 1577-1594, asserts that no one questioned his authorship during his lifetime or for centuries after his death, and that biographical interpretations of literature are invalid for attributing authorship.

Although little biographical information exists about Shakespeare of Stratford compared to later authors, Bate asserts that more is known about him than about most other playwrights and actors of the period. This lack of information is unsurprising, they say, given that in Elizabethan/Jacobean England the lives of commoners were not as well documented as those of the gentry and nobility, and that many—indeed the overwhelming majority—of Renaissance documents that existed have not survived until the present day.

Pseudonymous or secret authorship in Renaissance England

Hyphenated "SHAKE-SPEARE" on the cover of the Sonnets (1609)

Archer Taylor and Frederic J. Mosher identified the 16th and 17th centuries as the "golden age" of pseudonymous authorship and maintain that during this period “almost every writer used a pseudonym at some time during his career.” Anti-Stratfordians have argued that aristocratic writers used pseudonyms to write for the public because of what they assert was a prevailing "stigma of print", a social convention that ostensibly restricted their literary works to private and courtly audiences - as opposed to "commercial" endeavors - at the risk of social disgrace if violated.

Diana Price has analyzed several examples of Elizabethan commentary on anonymous or pseudonymous publication by persons of high social status. According to her, "there are two historical prototypes for this type of authorship fraud, that is, attributing a written work to a real person who was not the real author". Both are Roman in origin and both are mentioned by contemporary Elizabethan writers with what skeptics believe are implications that apply to the authorship of Shakespeare's plays:

• Bathyllus took credit for verses written by Virgil, and then accepted a reward for them. In 1591, pamphleteer (Robert Greene) described an Elizabethan "Batillus", who put his name to verses written by certain poets who, because of "their calling and gravity" did not want to publish under their own names. This Batillus was accused of "under-hand brokery."

• A second prototype is the classical playright Terence, two of whose six comedies the Elizabethan pedagogue and classicist Roger Ascham noted were believed in antiquity to have been written by his patrician patrons Scipio Africanus and Laelius..

An example of Elizabethan authorities raising the issue is provided by the case of Sir John Hayward:

• In 1599, Hayward published The First Part of the Life and Raigne of King Henrie IV dedicated to Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. Queen Elizabeth and her advisers disliked the tone of the book and its dedication, and on July 11, Hayward was interrogated before the Privy Council, which was seeking "proof positive of the Earl's [sc. Essex's] long-standing design against the government" in writing a preface to Hayward's work. The Queen "argued that Hayward was pretending to be the author in order to shield 'some more mischievous' person, and that he should be racked so that he might disclose the truth".

"Shake-Speare" as a possible pseudonym

Anderson and other anti-Stratfordians say that the name "Shakespeare" would have made a symbolically apt pseudonym because it alludes to the patron goddess of art, literature and statecraft, Pallas Athena, who sprang from the forehead of Zeus shaking a spear. They also claim that the hyphen in the name "Shake-speare", which appeared in 15 of the 32 editions of Shakespeare's plays published before the First Folio, indicated the use of a pseudonym. Tom Tell-truth, Martin Mar-prelate (who pamphleteered against church "prelates"), and Cuthbert Curry-knave, who "curried" his "knavish" enemies, are examples of other hyphenated pseudonyms of the period.

However, Strattfordians assert that no scholar of Elizabethan literature or punctuation affirms that a hyphen signaled a pseudonym, and that the claim is unknown outside of anti-Stratfordian literature. Matus points out that proper names hyphenated in print were not uncommon in Elizabethan times, citing the examples of poet and clergyman Charles Fitzgeoffrey, often printed as "Charles Fitz-Geffry"; Protestant martyr Sir John Oldcastle, as “Old-castle”; London Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Campbell, “Camp-bell”; printer Edward Allde, “All-de”; and printer Robert Waldegrave, “Walde-grave”.

Front-man or play broker

"Poor POET-APE, that would be thought our chief, Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit, From brokage is become so bold a thief, As we, the robbed, leave rage, and pity it. At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean, Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown To a little wealth, and credit in the scene, He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own. And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes The sluggish gaping auditor devours; He marks not whose 'twas first: and after-times May judge it to be his, as well as ours. Fool, as if half eyes will not know a fleece From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece?"

On Poet Ape, Ben Jonson, c.1612.

Independent research Diana Price acknowledges that Shakespeare's name appears on the title pages of numerous play texts, but questions the traditional implication, asking "But what if his name is on the title pages for another reason? What if he were a play broker who took credit for the works of others?"

Similarly, skeptic Mark Anderson has suggested that when poet John Davies referred to Shakespeare as "our English Terence, Mr Will. Shake-speare", he could be naming Shakespeare of Stratford as a front man, given that one tradition has it that some of Terence's plays were written by Roman nobles. Anderson also notes that "Greene's Groatsworth of Wit" could imply Shakespeare of Stratford was being given credit for the work of other writers.

Diana Prices notes that "In Shakespeare's day, those who traded in used costumes were called frippers or brokers. Those who traded in plays, as in other commodities, were also brokers." Price also notes that Ben Jonson used both terms in the epigram, "On Poet-Ape", written between 1595-1612, and often regarded as concerning Shakespeare:

Prices asserts that "this underhand play broker was passing off other men's work as his own". Price explains further, stating "If Shakespeare was, in fact, a Battillus or "under-hand" play broker who bought manuscripts from various authors, then we might reasonably expect to find plays published over the name 'William Shakespeare'," but written by various other authors... And we do." Price notes that a number of plays including The London Prodigal (1605) and A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608) were "published during Shakespeare of Stratford's lifetime and attributed to 'William Shakespeare' yet nobody thinks that they belong in the [Shakespearean] canon..."

John Michell, notes that the "straightforward, orthodox view is that Jonson was merely saying what Shakespeareans have always admitted, that Shakespeare borrowed freely from contemporary as well as ancient authors, and that certain parts of his plays were probably contributed by other dramatists". Other candidates for the 'Poet Ape' include Thomas Dekker, John Marston, and most recently, Thomas Heywood.

History of authorship doubts

Main article: History of the Shakespeare authorship question

Like most issues having to do with the debate over Shakespeare's authorship, documenting the history of the Shakespeare authorship question is often contentious. There is no agreement, academic or otherwise, as to when the theory was first proposed or alluded to. Numerous Shakespeare scholars, including Jonathan Bate and William Hasting, assert that during the life of William Shakespeare and for more than 200 years after his death, no one suggested that anyone other than Shakespeare wrote the works. However, some researchers, including authorship skeptics Diana Price and John Michell, believe that several 16th and 17th century works, including allusions by Elizabethan satirists Joseph Hall and John Marston hint that the Shakespearean canon was written by someone else.

File:Joseph Hall.jpg

Joseph Hall ((1574–1656)) may have been an early authorship doubter.

According to mainstream critics William and Elizebeth Griedman, the first possible allusions to doubts about Shakespearean authorship arose in certain 18th century satirical and allegorical works. Throughout the 18th century, Shakespeare was described as a transcendent genius and by the beginning of the 19th century Bardolatry was in full swing. Uneasiness about the difference between Shakespeare's godlike reputation and the humdrum facts of his biography began to emerge in the 19th century. In 1850, Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed the underlying question in the air about Shakespeare saying, "The Egyptian [i.e. mysterious] verdict of the Shakspeare Societies comes to mind; that he was a jovial actor and manager. I can not marry this fact to his verse."

In 1853, with help from Emerson, Delia Bacon, an American teacher and writer, travelled to Britain to research her belief that Shakespeare's works were written to communicate the advanced political and philosophical ideas of Francis Bacon (no relation). Later writers such as Ignatius Donnelly portrayed Francis Bacon as the sole author. The American poet Walt Whitman declared himself agnostic on the issue and refrained from endorsing an alternative candidacy. Voicing his skepticism, Whitman remarked, "I go with you fellows when you say no to Shaksper: that's about as far as I have got. As to Bacon, well, we'll see, we'll see."

In 1918, Professor Abel Lefranc, a renowned authority on French and English literature, put forward William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby as the author, based on biographical evidence found in the plays and poems In 1920, an English school-teacher, John Thomas Looney, published Shakespeare Identified, proposing a new candidate for the authorship in Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. This theory gained many notable advocates, including Sigmund Freud. By the early 20th century, the Bacon movement faded resulting in increased interest in Stanley and Oxford. In 1923, Archie Webster wrote the first serious essayon the candidacy of playwright Christopher Marlowe.

In the 1950's and 60's, the "group theory" of Shakespeare authorship was quite popular. It is known that during the late 16th century, collaboration in the writing of plays was not uncommon. For example, John Fletcher appears as the co-author of Henry VIII. Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, William Stanley, Roger Manners and Mary Sidney Herbert were proposed as members of such a group. In addition, playwrights including Thomas Nashe, Christopher Marlowe, and Robert Greene have been proposed as co-authors of the plays.

Since the publication of Charlton Ogburn'sThe Mysterious William Shakespeare: the Myth and the Reality in 1984, the Oxfordian theory, boosted in part by the advocacy of several Supreme Court justices, high-profile theatre professionals, and a limited number of academics, has become the most popular alternative authorship theory.

In 2007, the New York Times surveyed 265 Shakespeare professors on the topic. To the question "Do you think there is good reason to question whether William Shakespeare of Stratford is the principal author of the plays and poems in the canon?", 6% answered "yes" and an additional 11% responded "possible". When asked what best described their opinion of the Shakespeare authorship question, 61% answered that it was a "A theory without convincing evidence" while 32% called the issue "A waste of time and classroom distraction". When asked if they "mention the Shakespeare authorship question in (their) Shakespeare classes?", 72% answered "yes".

Doubts about Shakespeare of Stratford

Literary paper trails

Diana Price’s Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography: New Evidence of an Authorship Problem approaches the authorship question by going back to the historical documents and testimony that underpin Shakespeare’s biography. Price believes that centuries of biographers have suspended their standards and criteria to weave inadmissible evidence into their narratives. She offers new analyses of the evidence and then reconstructs Shakespeare of Stratford’s professional life.

According to Price, literary biographies, i.e., lives of writers, are based on evidence left behind during the writer’s lifetime, such as manuscripts, letters, diaries, personal papers, receipts, etc. Price calls these "literary paper trails" - the documents that allow biographers to reconstruct the life of their subject as a writer. Price acknowledges that Shakespeare of Stratford did leave behind a considerable amount of evidence, but asserts that none of it traces his alleged career as a playwright and poet. In his case, the first document in the historical record that “proves” he was a writer was created after he died. Price notes that historians routinely distinguish between contemporaneous and posthumous evidence, and they don’t give posthumous evidence equal weight - but Shakespeare’s biographers do.

The central chapter on Literary Paper Trails, and an associated appendix chart, compare the evidence of two dozen other writers with that of Shakespeare of Stratford’s. The criteria are simple and routinely employed by historians and biographers of other subjects. Evidence that is personal, contemporaneous, and supports one statement, “he was a writer by vocation or profession,” qualifies for inclusion in the comparative chart. Price sorted the evidence into numerous categories, which were then collapsed into 9 categories, with a 10th one created to serve as an all-purpose catch-all to ensure that no qualifying paper trail was excluded.

Each of these two dozen Elizabethan and Jacobean writers left behind a variety of records shedding light on their writing activities. For example, historians know how much some of them got paid for writing a poem or a play, or how much a patron rewarded them for their literary effort. Some left behind letters referring to their plays or poems. A few of them left behind handwritten manuscripts or books with handwritten annotations.

Price records that Shakespeare of Stratford left behind over seventy historical records, and over half of these records shed light on his professional activities. Price notes, however, that every one of these documents concerns non-literary careers – those of theatrical shareholder, actor, real estate investor, grain trader, money-lender, and entrepreneur. But he left behind not one literary paper trail that proves he wrote for a living. In the genre of literary biography for Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, Price concludes that this deficiency of evidence is unique.

Education

Dramatist Ben Jonson is often cited by both sides of the authorship debate.

Authorship doubters such as Ogburn and Michell believe that the author of Shakespeare's works manifest a higher education, displaying knowledge of contemporary science, medicine, astronomy, rhetoric, music, and foreign languages. They further assert that there is no evidence that Shakespeare of Stratford ever attained such an education. In addition, the writer of the Shakespeare canon exhibited a very extensive vocabulary, variously calculated, according to different criteria, as ranging between 17,500 to 29,066 words. Many anti-Stratfordians, such as Mark Anderson, believe that mainstream scholars have failed to explain Shakespeare's knowledge of of foreign languages, modern sciences, warfare, law, statesmanship, hunting, natural philosophy, history, and aristocratic sports including tennis and lawn-bowling.

Regarding Shakespeare's possible attendance at the Stratford grammar school, many skeptics note that as the records of the school's pupils have not survived, Shakespeare of Stratford's attendance cannot be proven; that no one who ever taught or attended The King's School ever claimed to have been his teacher or classmate; and that the school or schools Shakespeare of Stratford might have attended are a matter of speculation as there are no existing admission records for him at any grammar school, university or college. Skeptics also note that there is clearer evidence for Ben Jonson's formal education and self-education than for Shakespeare of Stratford's. Several hundred books owned by Ben Jonson have been found signed and annotated by him but no book has ever been found which proved to have been owned or borrowed by Shakespeare of Stratford. It is known, moreover, that Jonson had access to a substantial library with which to supplement his education.

According to Shakespearean scholar Honan Park, the Stratfordian position maintains that Shakespeare of Stratford would have received the kind of education available to the son of a Stratford alderman at the local grammar school and at the parish church, including a comfortable mastery of the Bible, Latin, grammar and rhetoric. The former was run by a number of Oxford graduates, Simon Hunt, Thomas Jenkins and John Cottom, and the latter by Henry Heicroft, a fellow at St John's College, Cambridge.

Though there is no evidence that he attended a university, a degree was not a prerequisite for a Renaissance dramatist, and mainstream scholars have long assumed Shakespeare of Stratford to be largely self-educated, with such authorities as Jonathan Bate devoting considerable space in recent biographies to the issue. A commonly cited parallel is his fellow dramatist Ben Jonson, a man whose origins were humbler than those of the Stratford man, and who rose to become court poet. Like Shakespeare of Stratford, Jonson never completed and perhaps never attended university, and yet he became a man of great learning (later being granted an honorary degree from both Oxford and Cambridge).

Life experience

Anti-Stratfordians have long commented that a provincial glovemaker's son who resided in Stratford until early adulthood would have been unlikely to have written plays that deal so personally with the activities, travel and lives of the nobility. The view is summarised by Charles Chaplin: "In the work of greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere, but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare. . . . Whoever wrote them (the plays) had an aristocratic attitude." Some authorship doubters stress that the plays show a detailed understanding of politics, the law and foreign languages that would have been near impossible to attain without an aristocratic or university upbringing. Skeptics note that while the author's depiction of nobility was highly personal and multi-faceted, his treatment of commoners was quite different. Tom Bethell, in Atlantic Monthly, commented "The author displays little sympathy for the class of upwardly mobile strivers of which Shakspere (of Stratford) was a preeminent member. Shakespeare celebrates the faithful servant, but regards commoners as either humorous when seen individually or alarming in mobs".

Orthodox scholars such as Bate have responded that the glamorous world of the aristocracy was a popular setting for plays in this period and that numerous English Renaissance playwrights, including Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker wrote about the nobility despite their own humble origins. These scholars assert that Shakespeare was an upwardly mobile man: his company regularly performed at court and he thus had ample opportunity to observe courtly life. In The Genius of Shakespeare, Bate argues that the class argument is reversible: the plays contain details of lower-class life about which aristocrats might have little knowledge. Many of Shakespeare's most vivid characters are lower class or associate with this milieu, such as Falstaff, Nick Bottom, Autolycus, Sir Toby Belch, etc.

Last will and testament

Anti-stratfordians such as Michell and Ogburn note that Shakespeare of Stratford's will is long and explicit, bequeathing the possessions of a successful middle class businessman but making no mention of personal papers or books (which were expensive items at the time) of any kind, nor any mention of poems or of the 18 plays that remained unpublished at the time of his death, nor any reference to the valuable shares in the Globe Theatre that the Stratford man reportedly owned. This contrasts with Sir Francis Bacon, whose two wills refer to work that he wished to be published posthumously. Price finds it unusual that the Stratford man did not wish his family to profit from his unpublished work or was unconcerned about leaving them to posterity, and find it improbable that he would have submitted all the manuscripts to the King's Men, the playing company of which he was a shareholder, prior to his death. Anti-stratfordians also note that the only theatrical reference in Shakespeare of Stratford's will (gifts to fellow actors) were interlined—i.e., inserted between previously written lines—and thus are subject to doubt.

Stratfordians such as David Kathman have responded that the complete inventory of Shakespeare's possessions, mentioned at the bottom as being attached (Inventarium exhibitum), has been lost, and that is where any books or manuscripts would have been mentioned. Kathman also noted that not one of Shakespeare's contemporary playwrights mentioned play manuscripts in their wills. According to G.E. Bentley, in The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare's Time: 1590–1642, the plays were owned by the playing companies, who sold the publishing rights at their discretion, so Shakespeare's plays were not his to dispose of, being owned by the King's Men. It is not known whether William Shakespeare still owned the shares in the Globe Theatre at his death, but three other major share holders besides Shakespeare who were positively known to hold shares when they died—Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillips, and Henry Condell—also didn't mention Globe shares in their wills.

Funerary monument

Shakespeare's Stratford Bust, from Dugdale's Warwickshire (1656). Doubters note what appears to be a woolsack and the absence of pen and paper suggests the figure more likely represents Shakespeare, the merchant-businessman.

Shakespeare's Stratford Bust, as published by Nicholas Rowe in 1709, with similar woolsack and absence of pen and paper.

Shakespeare's "Stratford monument", with pen in hand, engraved in 1723 by George Vertue.

The Stratford Bust, as it was represented in print between 1656 and 1723. Mainstream critics maintain the first two illustrators were simply inaccurate as to details.

Shakespeare's grave monument in Stratford, built within a decade of his death, currently features an effigy of him with a pen in hand, suggestive of a writer, with an attached inscribed plaque praising his abilities as a writer. But some anti-Stratfordians assert that the monument was clearly altered after its installation, as the earliest printed image of the monument in Sir William Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, published in 1656, merely portrays a man holding a grain sack. The monument is portrayed similarly in Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 edition of Shakespeare’s works. The earliest record of the pen (which evidently broke from the hand in the late eighteenth century and is now represented by a real goose quill) dates from an engraving of the memorial made by George Vertue in 1723 and published in Alexander Pope's 1725 edition of Shakespeare's plays.

When the effigy and cushion, made of a solid piece of Cotswold limestone, was removed from its niche in 1973, Shakespeare scholar Sam Schoenbaum examined it and rendered an opinion that the monument was substantially as it was when first erected, with the hands resting on paper and writing-cushion, saying that "no amount of restoration can have transformed the monument of Dugdale's engraving into the effigy in Stratford church."

In 2006, researcher Richard Kennedy proposed that the monument was originally built to honour John Shakespeare, William’s father, who was described by Rowe as a “considerable” wool dealer, and that the effigy was later changed to fit the writer. Kennedy’s theory gained the support of orthodox scholars Sir Brian Vickers and Peter Beal. According to Vickers, "[W]ell-documented records of recurrent decay and the need for extensive repair work . . . make it impossible that the present bust is the same as the one that was in place in the 1620s."

Date of playwright's death

Dedication from SHAKE-SPEARE'S SONNETS (1609).

Some authorship doubters, including Ruth Miller and Mark Anderson, believe that the actual playwright was dead by 1609, the year Shake-speare's Sonnets, appeared with "our ever-living Poet" on the dedication page, words typically used to eulogize someone who has died, yet has become immortal. Shakespeare himself used the phrase in this context in Henry VI, part 1 describing the dead Henry V as "[t]hat ever living man of memory" (4.3.51). And in 1665, Richard Brathwait used the exact same terminology referring to the deceased poet Jeffrey Chaucer, "A comment upon the two tales of our ancient, renovvned, and ever-living poet Sr. Jeffray Chavcer, Knight."

In 1987, mainstream researcher Donald Foster noted that the phrase “ever-living” appears most frequently in Renaissance texts as a conventional epithet for eternal God. Foster also asserts that the term "begetter” was frequently used to mean "author" in Renaissance book dedications. Thus, Jonathan Bate, leaving out the initials, translates the largely formulaic dedication in modern English as “Thomas Thorpe, the well-wishing publisher of the following sonnets, takes the opportunity upon publishing them to wish their only author all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever living poet.”

Fosters claim, and the Bate translation, however, do not represent the more traditional mainstream belief, espoused by noted Shakespearean scholar Sydney Lee, that "In Elizabethan English there was no irregularity in the use of 'begetter' in its primary sense of 'getter' or 'procurer'". Lee compiled numerous examples of the word used in this way and asserts that any doubt about the definition is "barely justifiable". Some modern Shakespearen specialists, such as Katherine Duncan-Jones, believe the sonnets were published with Shakespeare’s full authorization, this assertion, however, stands in contrast to the more general believe noted by Lee, that "The corrupt state of the text Thorpe's edition of 1609 fully confirms that the enterprise lacked authority,...the character of the numerous misreadings leaves little doubt that Thorpe had no means of access to the authors MS."

"Shakspere" vs. "Shakespeare"

Many anti-Stratfordians conventionally refer to the man from Stratford as "Shakspere" (the name recorded at his baptism) or "Shaksper" to distinguish him from the author "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare" (the spellings that appear most often on the publications). Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a noted Oxfordian, has stated that most references to the man from Stratford in legal documents usually spell the first syllable of his name with only four letters, "Shak-" or sometimes "Shag-" or "Shax-", whereas the dramatist's name is more consistently printed as "Shake".

Stratfordians reject this convention, pointing out that there was no standardised spelling in Elizabethan England, and Shakespeare of Stratford's name was spelled in many different ways, including "Shakspere", "Shaxper", "Shagspere" and "Shakespeare"; that examples anti-Stratfordians give for Shakespeare of Stratford's name are all handwritten and not printed; that anti-Stratfordians are factually incorrect in that most of those examples were spelled either Shakespeare, Shakespere, or Shakespear; and that handwritten examples of the author's name exhibit the same amount of variation. Stratfordian David Kathman also argues that the anti-Stratfordian characterization of the name—"Shakspere" or "Shakspur"—incorrectly characterizes the contemporary spelling of Shakespeare's name and introduces prejudicial negative implications of the Stratford man in the minds of modern readers.

Candidates

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford is the leading alternative candidate for the author behind the alleged pseudonym, Shake-Speare

The Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship holds that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604), wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. While a large majority of scholars reject all alternative candidates for authorship, there is increased interest in various authorship theories. Since the 1920s, Oxford has been the most widely accepted anti-Stratfordian candidate.

Oxfordians point to the acclaim of Oxford's contemporaries regarding his talent as a poet and a playwright, his reputation as a concealed poet, and his personal connections to London theatre and the contemporary playwrights of Shakespeare's day. They also note his long term relationships with Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Southampton, his knowledge of Court life, his extensive and multilingual education, his academic and cultural achievements, and his wide-ranging travels through France and Italy to what would later become the locations of many of Shakespeare's plays.

The case for Oxford's authorship is also based on perceived similarities between Oxford's biography and events in Shakespeare's plays, sonnets and longer poems; parallels of language, idiom, and thought between Oxford's personal letters and the Shakespearean canon; and underlined passages in Oxford's personal bible, which Oxfordians believe correspond to quotations in Shakespeare's plays. Confronting the issue of Oxford's death in 1604, Oxfordian researchers cite examples they say imply the writer known as "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare" died before 1609, and point to 1604 as the year regular publication of "new" or "augmented" Shakespeare plays stopped.

History of the Oxfordian theory

The Oxford theory was first proposed by J. Thomas Looney in his 1920 work Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, subsequently persuading Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles, Marjorie Bowen, and many early 20th-century intellectuals of the case for Oxford's authorship. Oxford rapidly became the favoured alternative to the orthodox view. In 1921, Sir George Greenwood, Looney, and other proponents of the anti-Stratfordian perspective joined to found The Shakespeare Fellowship, an organization dedicated to the discussion of alternative views of authorship.

In 1984, Charlton Ogburn's The Mysterious William Shakespeare renewed the case for Oxford's authorship with an abundance of new research, and engaged in a critique of the standards and methods used by the orthodox school. In his Shakespeare Quarterly review of Ogburn's book, Richmond Crinkley, former Director of Educational Programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library, acknowledged the appeal of Ogburn's approach: "Doubts about Shakespeare came early and grew rapidly. They have a simple and direct plausibility", and the dismissive approach of conventional scholarship encouraged such doubts: "The plausibility has been reinforced by the tone and methods by which traditional scholarship has responded to the doubts." Although Crinkley rejected Ogburn's thesis, believing the "case made for Oxford leaves one unconvinced", he also concluded "a particular achievement of ... Ogburn is that he focused our attention so effectively on what we do not know about Shakespeare.

Oxford as a concealed writer

The Ashbourne portrait of William Shakespeare, which hangs in the Folger Shakespeare Library was analyzed by Charles Wisner Barrell, an expert in infra-red photography, who determined it was an overpainting of the Earl of Oxford, though this is disputed.

Oxford was known as a dramatist and court poet of considerable merit, but not one example of his plays survives under his name. A major question in Oxfordian theory is whether his works were published anonymously or pseudonymously. Anonymous and pseudonymous publication was a common practice in the sixteenth century publishing world, and a passage in the Arte of English Poesie (1589), the leading work of literary criticism of the Elizabethan period and an anonymously published work itself, alludes to the practice of concealed publication by literary figures in the court. Oxfordian researchers believe these passages support their claim that Oxford was one of the most prominent "suppressed" writers of the day:

In Queenes Maries time florished above any other Doctout Phaer one that was well learned & excellently well translated into English verse Heroicall certaine bookes of Virgils Aeneidos. Since him followed Maister Arthure Golding, who with no lesse commendation turned into English meetre the Metamorphosis of Ouide, and that other Doctour, who made the supplement to those bookes of Virgils Aeneidos, which Maister Phaer left undone. And in her Maiesties time that now is are sprong up another crew of Courtly makers Noble men and Gentlemen of her Maiesties owne servaunts, who have written excellently well as it would appear if their doings could be foundout and made publicke with the rest, of which number is first that noble Gentleman Edward Earle of Oxford, Thomas Lord of Bukhurst, when he was young, Henry Lord Paget, Sir Philip Sydney, Sir Walter Rawleigh Master Edward Dyar, Maister Fulke Grevell, Gascon, Britton, Turberuille and a great many other learned Gentlemen, whose names I do not omit for envie, but to avoyde tediousneffe, and who have deserved no little commendation. But of them all particularly this is myne opinion, that Chaucer, with Gower, Lidgat and Harding for their antiquitie oughte to have the first place, and Chaucer as the most renowmed of them all, for the much learning appeareth to be in him aboue any of the rest.

Andrew Hannas, in an article titled "On Grammar and Oxford in The Art of English Poesie", paraphrased the passage: "In earlier days these writers’ poetry found their way into print, and now we have many in our own Queen's time whose poetry would be much admired if the extent of their works could be known and put into print as with those poets I have just named ["made publicke with the rest"], poets from Chaucer up through Golding and Phaer-Twinne, translators of Ovid and Virgil. And here are the NAMES of the poets [Oxford, Buckhurst, Sidney, et al.] of our Queen's time who deserve such favorable comparison "with the rest" [the Chaucer et al. list] But still, "of them all" [Chaucer through the Oxford–Sidney list], I would give highest honours to Chaucer because of the learning in his works that seems better than any of all of the aforementioned names ["aboue any of the rest"], and special merit to the other poets in their respective genres."

Oxfordians note that at the time of the passage's composition (pre-1589), the writers referenced were themselves concealed writers. First and foremost Sir Philip Sydney, none of whose poetry was published until after his death. Similarly, by 1589 nothing by Greville was in print and none of Walter Raleigh's works had been published (except one commendatory poem 12 years earlier in 1576).

Oxfordians also believe the satirist John Marston's 1598 publication of his Scourge of Villanie contains further indications Edward de Vere was a concealed writer:

.......Far fly thy fame,

Most, most of me beloved, whose silent name
One letter bounds. Thy true judicial style
I ever honour, and if my love beguile
Not much my hopes, then thy unvalu'd worth

Shall mount fair place when Apes are turned forth.

The word Ape means pretender or mimic, and Oxfordians maintain the writer whose silent name is bound by one letter is Edward de VerE.

Oxford as a poet and playwright

There are three principal pieces of evidence praising Oxford as a poet and a playwright:

(1) The anonymous 1589 Arte of English Poesie, usually attributed to George Puttenham, contains a chapter describing the practice of concealed publication by court figures, which includes a passage listing Oxford as the finest writer of comedy:

for Tragedie, the Lord of Buckhurst, & Maister Edward Ferrys for such doings as I haue sene of theirs do deserue the hyest price: Th'Earle of Oxford and Maister Edwardes of her Maiesties Chappell for Comedy and Enterlude.

(2) Francis Meres' 1598 Palladis Tamia, which refers to him as Earle of Oxenford, lists him among the "best for comedy". Shakespeare's name appears further down the same list.

so the best for comedy amongst us bee, Edward Earle of Oxenforde, Doctor Gager of Oxforde, Maister Rowley once a rare Scholar of learned Pembroke Hall in Cambridge, Maister Edwardes one of her Majesty's Chapel, eloquent and witty John Lilly, Lodge, Gascoyne, Greene, Shakespeare, Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, Anthony Munday our best plotter, Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hathway, and Henry Chettle.

Stratfordians believe Shakespeare's appearance on the same list proves Oxford and Shakespeare were different writers. For an Oxfordian discussion of this topic, see the wiki references in the entry on Francis Meres.

(3) Henry Peacham's 1622 The Compleat Gentleman omits Shakespeare's name and praises Oxford as one of the leading poets of the Elizabethan era, saying:

In the time of our late Queene Elizabeth, which was truly a golden Age (for such a world of refined wits, and excellent spirits it produced, whose like are hardly to be hoped for, in any succeeding Age) above others, who honoured Poesie with their pennes and practise (to omit her Maiestie, who had a singular gift herein) were Edward Earle of Oxford, the Lord Buckhurst, Henry Lord Paget; our Phoenix, the noble Sir Philip Sidney, M. Edward Dyer, M. Edmund Spencer, M. Samuel Daniel, with sundry others; whom (together with those admirable wits, yet liuing, and so well knowne) not out of Ennuie but to auoid tediousnesse, I overpasse. Thus much of Poetrie.

Stratfordians disagree with this interpretation of Peacham, asserting that Peacham copied large parts of Puttenham's work but only used the names of those writers he considered "gentlemen", a title Peacham felt did not apply to actors. They further argue his list is of poets only and he did not include playwrights, neglecting for example Christopher Marlow.

Although not strictly a report on Oxford's ability as a playwright, there is also a description of the esteem to which he was held as a writer in The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois, a 1613 play by George Chapman, who has been suggested as the Rival Poet of Shake-speares Sonnets:

I overtook, coming from Italy

In Germany, a great and famous Earl
Of England; the most goodly fashion’d man
I ever saw: from head to foot in form
Rare and most absolute; he had a face
Like one of the most ancient honour’d Romans
From whence his noblest family was deriv’d;
He was besides of spirit passing great
Valiant and learn’d, and liberal as the sun,
Spoke and writ sweetly, or of learned subjects,
Or of the discipline of public weals:

And ‘twas the Earl of Oxford.

Oxford's lyric poetry

Much of Oxford's early lyric poetry survives under his own name. In the opinion of J. Thomas Looney, as "far as forms of versification are concerned De Vere presents just that rich variety which is so noticeable in Shakespeare; and almost all the forms he employs we find reproduced in the Shakespeare work...."

"So far as the natural disposition of the writer is concerned...(t)he personality they reflect is perfectly in harmony with that which peer through the writings of Shakespeare. There are traces undoubtedly of those defects which the sonnets disclose in "Shakespeare," but through it all there shines the spirit of an intensely affectionate nature, highly sensitive, and craving for tenderness and sympathy. He is a man with faults, but stamped with reality and truth; honest even in his errors, making no pretence of being better than he was, and recalling frequently to our minds the lines in one of Shakespeare's sonnets:"

I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own.

As far as the quality of Edward de Vere's known verse is concerned, Oxfordians respond to the charge that it is not at the level one would expect of a "Shakespeare" in two ways. First, Oxford's known works are those of a young man and as such should be consider juvenilia. And second, neither is Titus Andronicus, and whoever wrote that play eventually wrote Hamlet. As Joseph Sobran observed, "The objection may be still made that…Oxford's poetry remains far inferior to Shakespeare's. But even granting the point for the sake of argument, ascribing authorship on the basis of quality is an uncertain business. Early in the (20th) century some scholars sought to exclude such plays as Titus Andronicus … on the grounds that they were unworthy of Shakespeare. Today their place is secure…. The poet who wrote King Lear was at some time also capable of writing Titus Andronicus."

The 1604 issue

Title page from SHAKE-SPEARE'S SONNETS (1609).

Dedication page from The Sonnets. Both the hyphenated name and the words "ever-living poet", have helped fuel the authorship debate

The publication of SHAKE-SPEARE'S SONNETS in 1609 has provided numerous debating points for authorship proponents on both sides of the question. The hyphenated name also appears on 15 plays published prior to the First Folio

For mainstream critics, the most compelling evidence against Oxford is that he died in 1604, whereas they contend that a number of plays by Shakespeare were written after that date. These critics most often cite The Tempest, Henry VIII and Macbeth as almost certainly having been written after 1604.

Oxfordian scholars, on the other hand, have cited examples they say imply the writer of the plays and poems died prior to 1609, when Shake-Speares Sonnets appeared with the enigmatic words "our ever-living poet" on its title page. These researchers claim the words "ever-living" rarely, if ever, refer to someone who is alive, but instead refers to the eternal soul of the deceased. Additionally, they assert 1604 is the year "Shakespeare" stopped writing. If these claims were true, it would give a boost to the Oxfordian candidacy, as Bacon, Derby, Neville, and Shakespeare of Stratford all lived well past the 1609 publication of the Sonnets.

Moreover, significant and unresolved debate persists over the question of whether many of the so-called "late plays" were actually written, as is generally alleged by orthodox scholars, during the Jacobean period. Andrew Cairncross, for example, argued persuasively as early as 1936, in an argument less refuted than ignored since then, that Hamlet was written as early as 1588-89. For one reason or another, evidence exists that all the allegedly Jacobean plays may actually have been written several years earlier than is customarily believed, and all of them before 1604.

Publication

The speculation that the existing chronology is significantly too late is strongly supported, Oxfordians argue, by the publication pattern of Shakespeare's plays. Updating the argument to this effect originated by John Thomas Looney, Mark Anderson stresses that from 1593 through 1603 the publication of new Shake-speare's plays "appeared in print, on average, twice per year." Then, he speculates, in 1604 Shake-speare fell silent and stopped (new play) publication for almost 5 years. Anderson further states "the early history of reprints ... also point to 1604 as a watershed year", and notes that during the years of 1593–1604, whenever an inferior or pirated text was published, it was then typically followed by a genuine text that was "newly augmented" or "corrected": "After 1604, the 'newly correct[ing]' and 'augment[ing]' stops. Once again, the Shake-speare enterprise appears to have shut down".

Composition

Addressing the plays' dates of composition, Oxfordians note the following: In 1756, in Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Ben Jonson, W. R. Chetwood concludes on the basis of performance records "at the end of the year of [1603], or the beginning of the next, 'tis supposed that [Shakespeare] took his farewell of the stage, both as author and actor." In 1874, German literary historian Karl Elze dated both The Tempest and Henry VIII — traditionally labeled as Shakespeare's last plays — to the years 1603-04. In addition, the majority of 18th and 19th century scholars, including notables such as Samuel Johnson, Lewis Theobald, George Steevens, Edmond Malone, and James Halliwell-Phillipps, placed the composition of Henry VIII prior to 1604. And in the 1969 and 1977 Pelican/Viking editions of Shakespeare's plays, Alfred Harbage showed the composition of Macbeth, Timon of Athens, Pericles, King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra — all traditionally regarded as "late plays" — likely did not occur after 1604.

Science

Anderson also observes that while Shakespeare refers to the latest scientific discoveries and events right through the end of the 16th century, "Shakespeare is mute about science after de Vere's [Oxford's] death in 1604". Anderson especially notes Shakespeare never mentioned the spectacular supernova of October 1604 or Kepler's revolutionary 1609 study of planetary orbits.

Notable silences

Because Shakespeare of Stratford lived until 1616, Oxfordians question why, if he were the author, did he not eulogize Queen Elizabeth at her death in 1603 or Henry, Prince of Wales, at his in 1612. In an age when such actions were expected, Shakespeare also failed to memorialize the coronation of James I in 1604, the marriage of Princess Elizabeth in 1612, and the investiture of Prince Charles as the new Prince of Wales in 1613.

Similarly, when Shakespeare of Stratford died, he was not publicly mourned. As Mark Twain wrote, in Is Shakespeare Dead?, "When Shakespeare died in Stratford it was not an event. It made no more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theatre-actor would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting poems, no eulogies, no national tears — there was merely silence, and nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened when Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh, and the other literary folk of Shakespeare's time passed from life! No praiseful voice was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years before he lifted his."

Diana Price, in Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography, notes that for a professional author, Shakespeare of Stratford seems to have been entirely uninterested in protecting his work. Price explains that while he had a well documented habit of going to court over relatively small sums, he never sued any of the publishers pirating his plays and sonnets, or took any legal action regarding their practice of attaching his name to the inferior output of others. Price also notes there is no evidence Shakespeare of Stratford was ever paid for writing and his detailed will failed to mention any of Shakespeare's unpublished plays or poems or any of the source books Shakespeare was known to have read. Oxfordians also note Shakespeare of Stratford's relatives and neighbors never mentioned he was famous or a writer, nor are there any indications his heirs demanded or received payments for his supposed investments in the theatre or for any of the more than 16 masterwork plays unpublished at the time of his death. Mark Twain, commenting on the subject, said, "Many poets die poor, but this is the only one in history that has died THIS poor; the others all left literary remains behind. Also a book. Maybe two."

Contemporary statements

In 1607 William Barkstead (or Barksted), a minor poet and playwright, appeared to state in his poem "Mirrha the Mother of Adonis" that Shakespeare was already deceased.

His Song was worthy merit (Shakespeare he)

sung the fair blossom, thou the withered tree
Laurel is due him, his art and wit

hath purchased it, Cypress thy brow will fit.

Joseph Sobran, in Alias Shakespeare, notes the cypress tree was a symbol of mourning, and believes Barkstead was specifically writing of Shakespeare in the past tense ("His song was worthy") — after Oxford's death in 1604, but prior to Shakespeare of Stratford's death in 1616.

Biographical Evidence

While there is no direct documentary evidence connecting Oxford (or any authorial candidate) to the plays of Shakespeare, Oxfordian researchers, including Mark Anderson and Charlton Ogburn believe the connection is provided by considerable circumstantial evidence, including: Oxford's connections to the Elizabethan theatre and poetry scene; the participation of his family in the printing and publication of the First Folio; his relationship with the Earl of Southampton (believed by most mainstream scholars to be "Shakespeare's patron"); as well as a number of specific circumstances from Oxford's life that Oxfordians believe are depicted in the plays themselves.

Oxford was a leaseholder of the first Blackfriars Theatre and produced grand entertainments at court; he was the son-in-law of Lord Burghley, who is often regarded as the model for Polonius; his daughter was engaged to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton (many scholars believe Southampton to have been the Fair Youth of the Sonnets); his mother, Margory Golding, was the sister of the Ovid translator Arthur Golding; and Oxford's uncle, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, was the inventor of the English or Shakespearean sonnet form. The three dedicatees of Shakespeare's works (the earls of Southampton, Montgomery and Pembroke) were each proposed as husbands for the three daughters of Edward de Vere. Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were dedicated to Southampton, and the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays was dedicated to Montgomery (who married Susan de Vere) and Pembroke (who was once engaged to Bridget de Vere). Shakespeare placed many of his plays in Italy and sprinkled them with detailed descriptions of Italian life. Though there are no records Shakespeare of Stratford ever visited mainland Europe, historical documents confirm Oxford lived in Venice, and traveled for over a year through Italy. According to Anderson, the Italian cities Oxford definitely visited in 1575-1576 were Venice, Padua, Milan, Genoa, Palermo, Florence, Siena and Naples and he probably also passed through Messina, Mantua and Verona — all cities "Shakespeare" later wrote into the plays, while (except for Rome) the Italian cities Oxford bypassed are the same cities Shakespeare ignored.

In 1588, due to ongoing financial problems, Oxford sold his house, Fisher's Folly, to William Cornwallis. In 1852, James Halliwell-Phillipps discovered a volume, "Anne Cornwaleys her booke," apparently the day book of Cornwallis’ daughter Anne, which Halliwell-Phillipps believed was written sometime in 1595. Anne's handwritten book contains "Verses Made by the Earl of Oxforde," "Anne Vavasour's Echo" (Anne Vavasour was Oxford's mistress 1579–1581, by whom he fathered an illegitimate child), and also a poem ascribed in 1599 to "Shakespeare" by William Jaggard in The Passionate Pilgrim. According to Charles Wisner Barrell, Anne's version was superior textually to the one published by Jaggard, and is the first handwritten example we have of a poem ascribed to Shakespeare.

While Oxfordians concede the names Avon and Stratford have become irrevocably linked to Shakespeare with the 1623 publication of the First Folio, they also note Edward de Vere once owned an estate in the River Avon valley near the Forest of Arden, and the nearest town to the parish of Hackney, where de Vere later lived and was buried, was also named Stratford. Oxfordians also regard Dr. John Ward's 1662 statement, that Shakespeare spent at a rate of £1,000 a year, as a critical piece of evidence given that, in an oft-noted parallel, Oxford received an unexplained annuity from the notoriously thrifty Queen Elizabeth I of exactly £1,000 a year.

Parallels with the plays

Oxfordian researchers note numerous instances where Oxford's personal and court biographies parallel the plots and subplots of many of the Shakespeare plays. Most notable among these are similarities between Oxford's biography and the actions depicted in Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew, both of which contain a number of local details that, Oxfordians believe, could only have been obtained by personal experiences; Henry V and Henry VI, Part 3, where the Earls of Oxford are given much more prominent roles than their limited involvement in the actual history of the times would allow; The Life and Death of King John, where Shakespeare felt it necessary to air-brush out of existence the traitorous Robert de Vere, 3rd Earl of Oxford. and Henry IV, Part 1, which includes a well-known robbery scene with uncanny parallels to a real-life incident involving Oxford. Oxfordians have also claimed many parallels between Oxford's relationship with his wife, Anne Cecil, and incidences in such plays as Othello, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and Measure for Measure, as well as the primary plot of All's Well That Ends Well.

Hamlet

William Cecil(Lord Burghley), Oxford's guardian and father-in-law, and Queen Elizabeth's most trusted advisor. Oxfordians believe Polonius is based on Burghley.

Numerous Oxfordian researchers, including Charlton Ogburn, point to Hamlet as the play most easily seen as portraying Oxford's life story.

• As in Hamlet, Oxford's father died suddenly (in 1562) and his mother remarried shortly thereafter.

• At 15, Oxford was made a royal ward and placed in the household of Lord Burghley, who was the Lord High Treasurer and Queen Elizabeth I's closest and most trusted advisor. Burghley is regarded by mainstream scholars as the prototype for the character of chief minister Polonius. Oxfordians point out that in the First Quarto the character was not named Polonius, but Corambis (Cor ambis means "two-hearted") — a swipe, as Charlton Ogburn said, "at Burghley’s motto, Cor unum, via una, or 'one heart, one way.'"

• Hamlet was engaged to marry Ophelia, daughter to Polonius, while Edward de Vere was engaged to marry (and did marry) Anne Cecil, daughter to Burghley.

• Like Laertes, who received the famous list of maxims from his father Polonius, Robert Cecil received a similarly famous list from his father Burghley — a list the mainstream scholar E. K. Chambers acknowledged was the author's likely source.

• One of Hamlet’s chief opponents at court was Laertes, the son of Polonius, while one of Oxford’s chief opponents at court was Robert Cecil, the son of Lord Burghley.

• Polonius sent the spy Reynaldo to watch his son when Laertes was away at school — and for similar reasons, Burghley sent a spy to watch his son, Thomas, when he was away in Paris.

• Hamlet was a member of the higher nobility, supported an acting company and had trusted friends named Horatio and Francisco. Likewise, Oxford was a member of the higher nobility, supported several acting companies, and had two famous cousins named Horace (or Horatio) Vere and Francis Vere. Horatio and Francisco are Italian forms of the "Fighting Veres" first names.

• Both Sir Horatio Vere (as he was also known) and Hamlet's friend Horatio had the same personality, being known for their ability to remain calm under all conditions.

• The ruler of Mantua in 1575, when Oxford traveled through the area, was Duke Guglielmo Gonzaga, who happened to be a member of the same Gonzaga family accused of assassinating the duke of Urbino by pouring poison down his ear. As Mark Anderson pointed out, “This is the same story Hamlet tells in his play-within-the-play, The Mousetrap”

• While returning from Italy in 1576 Edward de Vere first encountered a cavalry division outside of Paris that was being led by a German duke and then pirates in the English Channel. As Anderson stated: “Just as Hamlet’s review of Fortinbras’ troops leads directly to an ocean voyage overtaken by pirates, de Vere’s meeting with Duke Casimir’s army was soon followed by a Channel crossing intercepted by pirates."

• In Act IV, Hamlet describes himself as "set naked" in "the kingdom". In a striking parallel, after Oxford's real-life abduction, the Channel pirates left him stripped naked on the Danish shore. Anderson notes, "Neither the encounter with Fortinbras’ army nor Hamlet’s brush with buccaneers appears in any of the play's sources – to the puzzlement of numerous literary critics.)”

The Merchant of Venice

In 1577 the Company of Cathay was formed to support Martin Frobisher’s hunt for the Northwest Passage, although Frobisher —and his investors — quickly became distracted by reports of gold at Hall’s Island. With thoughts of an impending Canadian gold-rush filling Oxford's head, and trusting in the financial advice of a Michael Lok or Lock, de Vere finally went in bond for £3,000, "just as Antonio in The Merchant of Venice is in bond for 3,000 ducats against the successful return of his vessels, with rich cargoes." Although £3,000 was a large enough sum to ruin financially any man, Edward de Vere went on to support equally unsuccessful Northwest Passage expeditions in 1584 and again in 1585. An Oxfordian might say Edward de Vere, like Hamlet, was "but mad north-northwest."

Oxfordians also observe that Shakespeare set almost half of his plays in France and Italy and filled them with local details that were not strictly necessary. These details, Oxfordians believe, could only have been obtained by personal experiences. According to Mark Anderson "Shakespeare's works also convey a ... well-traveled world citizen.... Shakespeare knew that Florence's citizens were recognized for their arithmetic and bookkeeping (Othello).... He knew that a dish of baked doves was a time-honored northern Italian gift (The Merchant of Venice). He knew Venice in particular, like nowhere else in the world, save for London itself. Picayune Venetian matters scarcely escaped his grasp: the Duke of Venice's two votes in the city council, for example, or the special nighttime police force — the Signori di Notte— peculiar to Venice, or the foreign city where Venice’s Jews did most of their business, Frankfurt." Or, as the oxfordian William Farina noted, "the notorious Alien Statute of Venice, which provided the exact same penalty (as used in The Merchant of Venice): forfeiture of half an estate to the Republic and half to the wronged party, plus a discretionary death penalty, to any foreigner (including Jews) who attempted to take the life of a Venetian citizen.”

Oxford's extended tour of France and Italy from early 1575 through early 1576 included long-term lodgings near St. Mark’s Square in Venice. And according to the oxfordian William Farina "shy", when used as a prefix, also means “disreputable”.

The Taming of the Shrew

In 1577 the hard-drinking, straight-talking Peregrine Bertie successfully courted Oxford's sister, Mary de Vere, a lady known, in the words of Mark Anderson, “for her quick temper and harsh tongue.” Though the unlikely couple met the resistance of Oxford and others, they were married within a year. Oxfordians, such as Anderson, believe there is little doubt Bertie, his mother, Kate Willoughby and Mary de Vere, were variously lampooned, in The Taming of the Shrew, The Winter's Tale and Twelfth Night.

Oxfordians also note that when Edward de Vere travelled through Venice, he borrowed 500 crowns from a Baptista Nigrone. In Padua, he borrowed from a man named Pasquino Spinola. In The Taming of the Shrew, Kate's father is described as a man "rich in crowns." He, too, is from Padua, and his name is Baptista Minola — a conflation of Baptista Nigrone and Pasquino Spinola.

Oxfordians believe their position is further strengthened by the observations of the mainstream scholar Ernesto Grillo (1876-1946), of the University of Glasgow, who stated in Shakespeare and Italy, "the local colour of The Taming of the Shrew displays such an intimate acquaintance not only with the manners and customs of Italy but also with the minutest details of domestic life that it cannot have been gleaned from books or acquired in the course of conversations with travellers returned from Padua. The form of marriage between Petruchio and Katharine ... was Italian and not English.... The description of Gremio's house and furnishings is striking because it represents an Italian villa of the sixteenth century with all its comforts and noble luxury."

The play also shows Shakespeare using Italian with its banter between Lucentio and Tranio and in the greetings between Petruchio and Hortensio in its first act. As noted by Professor Grillo these exchanges are “pure Italian.” While in testimony before the Inquisition it was said Edward de Vere was fluent in Italian, as far as known, Shakespeare of Stratford never left England or showed any interest in Italy or Italian culture.

The Tempest

Although traditionally The Tempest was considered to have had no specific source, the play’s basic structure does reflect the Italian Commedia dell'Arte, and, in a general way, a series of scenarios appearing in Flaminio Scala's "The Theatre of Stage Plots", which was first published in Venice in 1611. However, a Commedia dell'Arte scenario, whose manuscript was discovered in 1913, called Arcadia Incantata (The Enchanted Arcadia) has been accepted by several scholars, including Kathleen Marguerite Lea in her Italian Popular Comedy: A study in the commedia dell'arte, 1560-1620 and Allardyce Nicoll, as a source for the play. In addition, Oxfordian researcher, Kevin Gilvary, has called Arcadia Incantata “an exact scenario for the story” of The Tempest." As described by Gilvary, the main scenario of Arcadia Incantata revolves around ship-wrecked survivors and “a magician who controls the island through spirits, which offer and then remove food from the starving companions. Various lovers among the shepherds and nymphs are confused. Eventually, the magician is able to right old wrongs, lead the survivors away from the island and abandon his art.”

Kathleen Marguerite Lea also believed Commedia dell'Arte was the main influence on The Comedy of Errors and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

While Oxford lived in Venice and northern Italy for almost a year, Shakespeare of Stratford had no known opportunity to view Italian street theater.

As You Like It

As You Like It features the former libertine Lord Jaques — who, like Oxford, "sold his lands to see other men’s". Much of the play takes place in the Forest of Arden, which was the name of the forest that stretched from Stratford-upon-Avon to Tamworth, near Oxford’s old country estate, Bilton. Mark Anderson notes "local oral tradition holds that As You Like It was actually written at Billesley, an estate just outside Stratford-upon-Avon owned by the family of de Vere’s grandmother, Elizabeth Trussell."

One of the sights Oxford may have taken in on his 1575–76 Christmas season visit to Siena, Italy was its cathedral, whose artwork includes a mosaic of the Seven Ages of Man. According to the art historian Samuel C. Chew, this artwork should be "familiar to Shakespearean scholars because it has been cited as a parallel to Jaques’ lines.... The Ages (in Siena) are represented thus: Infantia rides upon a hobbyhorse, Pueritia is a schoolboy, Adolescentia is an older scholar garbed in a long cloak, Juventus has a falcon on his wrist, Virilitas is robed in dignified fashion and carries a book, Senectus, leaning upon his staff, holds a rosary, Decrepitas, leaning upon two staves, looks into his tomb."

Act V, scene 1, has often been cited as cryptically denying Shakespeare of Stratford’s authorship. Here the court jester Touchstone and the country wench Audrey are about to get married. They meet William, a local bumpkin of the forest of Arden (which includes Stratford), who appears only in this scene. These three people and their actions are absent from the likely source, Thomas Lodge’s novel Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacie, which otherwise has the same storyline and characters (though it takes place in the Belgian Ardennes forests). Touchstone understands that William lays claim to Audrey, but Audrey says that William has no "interest in" (meaning "right to") her, and Touchstone berates William in an uncharacteristically caustic fashion, after which William meekly withdraws. Scholars on both sides recognize the character William as a reference to William Shakespeare of Stratford, while anti-Stratfordians find evidence throughout the play that Touchstone represents the author and Audrey either the author’s works or his muse. A Stratfordian interpretation is that the scene satirizes false learning and allowed the actor Shakespeare to appear in a cameo role, making fun of his own rural origins. Touchstone’s tirade to William includes:

“To have is to have. For it is a figure in rhetoric that drink, being powr’d out of a cup into a glass, by filling the one, doth empty the other. For all your writers doth consent that ipse [he himself] is he. Now, you [William of Arden] are not ipse — for I am he.”

Anti-Stratfordians here read the author proclaiming that William of Stratford “is not he” and cannot lay claim to the author’s muse or works. Oxfordians like to point out that "to have is to have" in Italian reads "avere é avere", suggesting "a Vere is a Vere".

The Life and Death of King John

In the inflated importance and superb speeches given to the character Philip Faulconbridge ("The Bastard") in The Life and Death of King John, Oxfordians see a reflection of Edward de Vere’s own military fantasies and his long-running legal argument with his half-sister over his legitimacy. They also find it intriguing the play’s author felt it necessary to air-brush out of existence the traitorous Robert de Vere, 3rd Earl of Oxford.

Henry IV, Part 1

In May 1573, in a letter to Lord Burghley, two of Oxford's former employees accused three of Oxford's friends of attacking them on "the highway from Gravesend to Rochester." In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1, Falstaff and three roguish friends of Prince Hal also waylay unwary travellers — on the highway from Gravesend to Rochester.

This scene was also present in the earlier work, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fift — which Oxfordians believe was another Edward de Vere play, based on the exaggerated importance it bestowed on the 11th Earl of Oxford. In that version of the play even the correct month of the crime, May, was mentioned.

Henry V

A number of observers, including the mainstream Shakespearean scholar Dover Wilson, believe the character of Fluellen was modelled after the Welsh soldier of fortune Sir Roger Williams. Charles Wisner Barrell wrote, "Many of the speeches that the author of Henry the Fifth puts in the mouth of the argumentative Fluellen are merely poetical paraphrases of Sir Roger’s own arguments and 'instances' in his posthumous book, The Actions of the Lowe Countries", which was not published until 1618 — and therefore the play's author could only have known of them through private manuscripts or personal observations. Sir Roger was a follower of Oxford, and served with "the fighting Veres” (Oxford’s cousins, Francis and Horatio) in the Dutch Republic. He had no known connection to Shakespeare of Stratford.

Also, in the play the character of the 12th Earl of Oxford is given a much more prominent role than his limited involvement in the actual history of the times would allow.

Henry VI, Part 3

This play deals mainly with the temporary restoration of Henry VI and includes the great Lancastrian defeat at Tewkesbury. Interestingly, Shakespeare makes the same mistakes regarding the thirteenth earl's involvement as he did with the prior earls.

First, throughout the play John de Vere, the thirteenth earl of Oxford is in the words of J. Thomas Looney, “hardly mentioned except to be praised:” Then in the last act, after the battle is lost and Oxford is captured, his place of imprisonment is mentioned:

“Away with Oxford to Hames Castle straight.” - Act V, scene v, line 2

However, as Isaac Asimov observed “This is strange. Opposition leaders, if taken alive, were generally executed as traitors after battle. Why was this not the case with Oxford?”

"Actually, it was because Oxford was not a Tewkesbury. He fought well at Barnet but then went to France. It was not till 1473, two years after Tewkesbury, which had been fought without him, that he attempted a reinvasion of England and a revival of the ruined Lancastrian cause. He was besieged in Cornwall and, after four and a half months, was forced to surrender.” It was only at this point, and only after everyone’s tempers had cooled, that he was sent to Hames castle..

Oxfordians, such as Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn, in their This Star of England, believe the reason Shakespeare went to the trouble of creating an ahistorical place for Oxford in the climatic battle was because it was the easiest way Edward de Vere could "advertised his loyalty to (Queen Elizabeth)" and remind her of "the historic part borne by the Earls of Oxford in defeating the usurpers and restoring the Lancastrians to power.”

The Merry Wives of Windsor

From an Oxfordian point of view, Shakespeare again used the life story of Edward de Vere in his plot for The Merry Wives of Windsor: Anne is Anne Cecil, the lovely, intelligent commoner and single woman who happens to have a rich father; Fenton is Oxford, the charming, clever, broke, verse-writing ne'er-do-well nobleman who is looking for a wife; and Anne’s father is William Cecil, the suspicious but rich potential father-in-law. Oxfordians hear the voice of de Vere, commenting on how his father-in-law Cecil views him, in the following passage spoken by Fenton:

I am too great of birth,
And that my state being gall’d with my expense,
I seek to heal it only by his wealth.
Besides these, other bars he lays before me,
My riots past, my wild societies;
And tells me ‘tis a thing impossible
I should love thee but as a property.

All's Well That Ends Well

On 19 December 1571, in an arranged wedding, Oxford married Lord Burghley's 15-year-old daughter, Anne Cecil — an equally surprising choice as that in All's Well That Ends Well, as Oxford was of the oldest nobility in the kingdom whereas Anne was not of noble birth, her father having only been raised to the peerage the same year by Queen Elizabeth to enable this marriage of social inequals.

J. Thomas Looney believed these events reveal striking parallels between Edward de Vere and Bertam:

Bertram, a young lord of ancient lineage, of which he is himself proud, having lost a father for whom he entertained a strong affection, is brought to court by his mother and left as a royal ward, to be brought up under royal supervision. As he grows up he asks for military service and to be allowed to travel, but is repeatedly refused or put off. At last he goes away without permission. Before leaving he had been married to a young woman with whom he had been brought up, and who had herself been most active in bringing about the marriage. Matrimonial troubles, of which the outstanding feature is a refusal of cohabitation, are associated with both his stay abroad and his return home. Such a summary of a story we have been told in fragments elsewhere, and is as near to biography or autobiography if our theory be accepted, as a dramatist ever permitted himself to go.

Also, in 1658, Francis Osborne (1593–1659) included a bed-trick anecdote about Oxford, himself, in hisTraditional Memoirs of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I. According to Osborne (who had been a servant to the Herberts), Philip Herbert, then earl of Montgomery (and later Pembroke), was struck in the face by a Scottish courtier named Ramsay at a horse race at Croydon. Herbert, who did not strike back, was left "nothing to testify his manhood but a beard and children, by that daughter of the last great Earl of Oxford, whose lady was brought to his bed under the notion of his mistress, and from such a virtuous deceit she [the Countess og Montgomery) is said to proceed." Although the bed-trick can be found in literature throughout history, in everything from King Arthur to Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron (where it appears eight times), Ogburn believed de Vere was drawn to the story “because it paralleled his own.”

Measure for Measure

From an Oxfordian perspective, Measure for Measure contains numerous autobiographical allusions to Edward de Vere. Besides another use of the bed trick, there is the Anne Cecil-like Isabella, plus the Oxford-like Duke of Vienna, working to save a prisoner from the death penalty — just as Edward de Vere tried but failed to save his cousin, Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk.

The generally accepted source of the play was a supposedly true incident that occurred in 1547, near Milan, a city Oxford visited in 1576. However, the play itself differs from these sources in a number of ways: First, the Duke's hidden manipulations were added; second, Claudio’s crime was changed from murder to seduction of a maiden — the same crime that sent Oxford to the Tower of London. And finally, Isabella did not marry Angelo but, following Anne Cecil’s life story, married the Duke (Oxford).

Oxfordians also note that in the play the Duke of Vienna preferred dealing with his problems through the use of a front, although he could have rescued Claudio at any time by dropping his disguise and stepping forward as himself.

In addition, Oxfordians see similarities between Edward de Vere's writings and the following Shakespearean passage:

Isabella:

It is not truer he is Angelo
Than this is all as true as it is strange.
Nay, it is ten times true. For truth is truth
To th’end of reckoning.

Oxford Letter to William Cecil, Lord Burghley:

Truth is truth, though never so old, and time cannot make that false which was once true.

Romeo and Juliet

Anne Vavasour, with whom Oxford had a tempestuous extramarital affair from 1579–81.

Oxford's illicit congress with Anne Vavasour resulted in an intermittent series of street battles between the Knyvet clan, led by Anne's uncle, Sir Thomas Knyvet, and Oxford’s men. As in Romeo and Juliet, this imbroglio produced three deaths and several other injuries. The feud was finally put to an end only by the intervention of the Queen, although not before Oxford himself was lamed in one of its duels. Oxfordians note that the theme of "lameness" is evident in many of Shake-speares Sonnets.

Much Ado About Nothing

From an Oxfordian standpoint, Much Ado About Nothing is an autobiography of Edward de Vere, starting with an apology to Anne Cecil for ever thinking she was unfaithful (as Claudio thinks Hero), to the Dogberry sub-plot as a parody of the Arundell-Howard Libel case, to a defense of his affair with Anne Vavasour. Sir Thomas Knyvet, Anne Vavasour’s enraged uncle, even makes an appearance as Beatrice’s enraged uncle with the lines "Sir boy, I’ll whip you from your foining fence, nay, as I am a gentleman, I will."

Othello, Cymbeline, and The Winter’s Tale

All three plays make use of the same Shakespearean plot Oxfordians believe closely follow Edward de Vere’s treatment of his long-suffering wife, Anne Cecil. According to Charlton Ogburn, in these "three plays the male protagonist conceives a murderous animosity toward a loving wife by imagining her unfaithful to him on the flimsiest of grounds, only to be later overwhelmed by remorse; and these three brutally condemned wives — Imogen in Cymbeline, Hermione in The Winter's Tale and Desdemona in Othello — are generally adjudged the most saintly and faultless of Shakespeare's heroines."

Timon of Athens

According to Joseph Sobran, Timon, "a rich and generous patron suddenly finds that his munificence has left him ruined and friendless. He bitterly denounces the human race, with one interesting exception: his steward. Timon’s praise of his steward, in the midst of his railing against mankind, suggests Oxford’s own praise of Robert Christmas, a faithful servant who apparently stayed with him during the hardship he inflicted on himself through his legendary prodigality." Mark Anderson, an Oxfordian researcher, wrote Timon of Athens "is Shakespeare's self-portrait as a downwardly mobile aristocrat."

The Comedy of Errors

When the character of Antipholus of Ephesus tells his servant to go out and buy some rope, the servant (Dromio) replies with a non sequitur that critics have scratched their heads over for centuries: ‘I buy a thousand pounds a year!’ the servant says, ‘I buy a rope!'” (Act 4, scene 1). As the mainstream Folger Shakespeare Library edition of the play states, "Dromio’s indignant exit line has not been satisfactorily explained."

In a coincidence often noted by Oxfordians, Edward de Vere received an annuity from the Queen, and later King James, of exactly £1,000 per year. Anderson surmises that "Annual grants of £1,000, one learns, come with some very large strings attached." In The Comedy of Errors, Oxfordians believe that de Vere speaks of his regrets over the power his £1,000 per year pension gave to those in authority over him. To support this view they also point to Sonnet 111:

Sonnet 111

O for my sake do you wish fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds’
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.

Twelfth Night

Oxfordians believe this play relentlessly mocks de Vere’s court rival of the 1570s, Sir Christopher Hatton as Malvolio. For example, in the play Malvolio discovers a prank letter signed “The Fortunate Unhappy,” which Oxfordians content is a play on Hatton’s pen name “The Unhappy Unfortunate.”

In 1732, the antiquarian Francis Peck published in Desiderata Curiosa a list of documents in his possession that he intended to print someday. They included “a pleasant conceit of Vere, earl of Oxford, discontented at the rising of a mean gentleman in the English court, circa 1580.” Oxfordian researcher Mark Anderson, contends this conceit is “arguably an early draft of Twelfth Night.” Unfortunately for the Oxfordian movement, Peck never published his archives, which are now lost.

Parallels with the sonnets and poems

In 1609, a volume of 154 linked poems was published under the title SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS, apparently without the participation of its author. Most historians believe someone other than Shakespeare also wrote its dedication. The focus of the series appears to follow the author's relationships with three characters, whose identities remain controversial: the Fair Youth, the Dark Lady or Mistress and the Rival Poet. The Fair Youth is generally, but far from universally, thought by mainstream scholars to be Southhampton. The Dark Lady is believed by some Oxfordians to be Anne Vavasour (or Vasasor), who bore the Earl of Oxford a son out of wedlock, whom she named Edward Vere. While there is no consensus candidate for the Rival Poet, some suppose he could have been Christopher Marlowe or George Chapman, although a strong case was made by the Oxfordian Peter R. Moore for Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.

Oxfordians assert that the inclusion of "by our ever-living poet" in its dedication implies the author was dead, "ever-living" being generally understood to mean the person in question was deceased. Oxfordians assert that not one researcher has been able to provide an example where the term "ever-living" referred to an individual who was alive at the time. Nevertheless, it remains debatable whether the phrase, in this context, refers to Shakespeare or to God.

Oxfordians also believe the finality of the title (Shake-Speares Sonnets) suggests it was a completed body of work, with no further sonnets expected. They also consider the Sonnets one of the more serious problems facing Stratfordians, who differ among themselves as to whether the Sonnets are fictional or autobiographical. Joseph Sobran questions why, if the sonnets were fiction, did Shakespeare of Stratford — who lived until 1616 — fail to publish a corrected and authorized edition? If, on the other hand, they are autobiographic, why did they fail to match the Stratford man's life story? According to Sobran and other researchers, the themes and personal circumstances expounded by the author of the Sonnets are remarkably similar to Oxford's biography.

In The De Vere Code, a recently published book by English actor Jonathan Bond, the author claims that the 30-word dedication to the original publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets contains six simple encryptions which conclusively establish Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford as the author of the poems. The encryptions also settle the question of the identity of "the Fair Youth" as Henry Wriothesley and contain striking references to the sonnets themselves and de Vere's relationship to Sir Philip Sidney and Ben Jonson.

Age

Oxford was born in 1550, and was between 40 and 53 years old when he presumably wrote the sonnets. Shakespeare of Stratford was born in 1564. Even though the average life expectancy of Elizabethans was short, being between 26 and 39 was not considered old. In spite of this, age and growing older are recurring themes in the Sonnets:

Sonnet 138

... vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best.

Shakespeare also described his relationship with the Fair Youth as like "a decrepit father." However, Shakespeare of Stratford was only 9 years older than Southampton, while Oxford was 23 years older.

Sonnet 37

As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth....

Lameness

In his later years, Oxford described himself as "lame". On several occasions, the author of the sonnets also described himself as lame:

Sonnet 37

I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite...

Sonnet 89

Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt...

Edward de Vere's letter of March 25, 1595 to Lord Burghley

"When Your Lordship shall have best time and leisure if I may know it, I will attend Your Lordship as well as a lame man may at your house."

Law

Sobran maintains the Sonnets "abound not only in legal terms — more than 200 — but also in elaborate legal conceits." These terms include: allege, auditor, defects, exchequer, forfeit, heirs, impeach, lease, moiety, recompense, render, sureties, and usage. Shakespeare also uses the then newly-minted legal term, "quietus" (final settlement), in the last Fair Youth sonnet.

Sonnet 134

So now I have confessed that he is thine,

And I myself am mortgaged to thy will,

Myself I’ll forfeit, so that other mine

Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still.

But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,

For thou art covetous, and he is kind:

He learned but surety-like to write for me,

Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.

The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,

Thou usurer that put'st forth all to use,

And sue a friend came debtor for my sake;

So him I lose through my unkind abuse....

Oxford was trained in the law and, in 1567, was admitted to Gray's Inn, one of the Inns of Court which Justice Shallow reminisces about in Henry IV, Part 2."

Southampton – The Fair Youth

Southhampton, Oxford's friend and prospective son-in-law, and the likely "fair youth" of the early sonnets.

Oxfordians, along with many mainstream scholars, believe Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, Oxford's associate and hoped-for son-in-law, is the "fair youth" referred to in the early sonnets. Sobran notes "the first seventeen sonnets, the procreation poems, give every indication of belonging to Burghley's campaign to make [Southampton] marry his granddaughter, [who was] Oxford's daughter Elizabeth Vere. Obviously, Oxford would have known all three parties.... It is hard to imagine how Mr. Shaksper (of Stratford) could have known any of them. Let alone have been invited to participate in the effort to encourage the match." Sobran also observes that in 16th-century England, actors and playwrights did not presume to give advice to the nobility, and believes "It is clear, too, that the poet is of the same rank as the youth. He praises, scolds, admonishes, teases, and woos him with the liberty of a social equal who does not have to worry about seeming insolent.... 'Make thee another self, for love of me' (Sonnet 10), is impossible to conceive as a request from a poor poet to his patron: it expresses the hope of a father — or a father-in-law. And Oxford was, precisely, Southampton's prospective father-in-law."

Sobran also cites Sonnet 91, contending the "lines imply that he (the author) is in a position to make such comparisons, and the 'high birth' he refers to is his own":

Thy love is better than high birth to me,

Richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ cost,

Of more delight than hawks or horses be.

Oxfordian author William Farina notes as well that in Sonnets 40–42 the Fair Youth seems to have gone on to steal the Dark Lady from Shakespeare; however in Sonnet 42 he is forgiven with the words "we must not be foes." As Farina wrote, the "idea of Will Shakespere (of Stratford) offering such assurance to the Earl of Southampton is truly a smiler."

Public disgrace

Sobran also believes "scholars have largely ignored one of the chief themes of the Sonnets: the poet's sense of disgrace.... [T]here can be no doubt that the poet is referring to something real that he expects his friends to know about; in fact, he makes clear that a wide public knows about it... Once again the poet's situation matches Oxford's.... He has been a topic of scandal on several occasions. And his contemporaries saw the course of his life as one of decline from great wealth, honor, and promise to disgrace and ruin. This perception was underlined by enemies who accused him of every imaginable offense and perversion, charges he was apparently unable to rebut."

Sonnet 29

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heav’n with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope....

Sonnet 112

Your love and pity doth th' impression fill

Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow,
For what care I who calls me well or ill,

So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?

As early as 1576 Edward de Vere was writing about this subject in his poem Loss of Good Name,[6] which Professor Steven W. May described as "a defiant lyric without precedent in English Renaissance verse."

Lost fame

The poems Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, first published in 1593 and 1594 under the name "William Shakespeare", proved highly popular for several decades - with Venus and Adonis published 6 more times before 1616, while Lucrece required 4 additional printings during this same period. By 1598, they were so famous, London poet and sonneteer Richard Barnefield wrote:

Shakespeare.....

Whose Venus and whose Lucrece (sweet and chaste)
Thy name in fame's immortal Book have plac't
Live ever you, at least in Fame live ever:

Well may the Body die, but Fame dies never.

Despite such publicity, Sobran observed, "[t]he author of the Sonnets expects and hopes to be forgotten. While he is confident that his poetry will outlast marble and monument, it will immortalize his young friend, not himself. He says that his style is so distinctive and unchanging that ‘every word doth almost tell my name,’ implying that his name is otherwise concealed – at a time when he is publishing long poems under the name William Shakespeare. This seems to mean that he is not writing these Sonnets under that (hidden) name."

Sonnet 81

...Or you survive, when I in earth am rotten;

From hence your memory death cannot take’
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have’ ''
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die;
The earth can yield me but a common grave’
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse’
Which eyes not yet created shall o’ver-read,

And tongues to be your being shall rehearse…

Sonnet 72

My name be buried where my body is, ''
And live no more to shame nor me, nor you…

Based on these sonnets, and others, Oxfordians assert that if the author expected his "name" to be "forgotten" and "buried", it would not have been the name that permanently adorned the published works themselves.

Prince Tudor theory

Main article: Prince Tudor theory

In a letter in 1933, J. Thomas Looney mentions in a postscript that Percy Allen and Captain Ward were advancing views in regard to Oxford and Queen Elizabeth that were extravagant and improbable. The ideas Ward and Allen developed have become known as the Prince Tudor or PT Theory. The PT Theory has split the Oxfordian movement into the orthodox Oxfordians, who regard the theory as an impediment to Oxford's recognition as Shakespeare, and the PT Theorists, who maintain their theory better explains Oxford's life and authorship.

The PT Theory advances the belief that Oxford and Queen Elizabeth had a child who was raised as Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. It is to this young Earl that Shakespeare dedicated Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. This Star of England by Charlton and Dorothy Ogburn devoted space to facts supporting this theory, which was expanded by Elisabeth Sears' Shakespeare and the Tudor Rose, and Hank Whittemore in The Monument, an analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnets which interprets the poems as a poetic history of Queen Elizabeth, Oxford, and Southampton. Paul Streitz's Oxford: Son of Queen Elizabeth I advances a variation on the theory: that Oxford himself was the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth.

Stratfordian objections

Oxford's death

The primary objection to the Oxfordian theory is Edward de Vere's 1604 death, after which, according to Stratfordians, a number of Shakespeare's plays are conventionally believed to have been written.

Oxfordians respond that as the conventional dates for the plays were developed by Stratfordian scholars to fit within the Stratfordian theory, they remain conjectural and self-serving. Oxfordians also note a number of the so-called "later plays", such as Henry VIII, Macbeth, Timon of Athens and Pericles have been described as incomplete or collaborative, whereas under the Oxfordian theory these plays were either drafted earlier than conventionally believed, or were simply revised/completed by others after Oxford's death.

Stratfordians reject these arguments and cite examples to support their point:

• Shakespearian scholar David Haley notes that in order to have written Coriolanus, Edward de Vere "must have foreseen the [1607 Midlands] grain riots reported in Coriolanus",, although other critics surmise that the opening scenes were more likely written in response to London's 1595 Tower Hill riot.

• The Tempest is considered by most mainstream scholars to have been inspired by William Strachey's description of a 1609 Bermuda shipwreck. However, mainstream literary scholar Kenneth Muir noted "the extent of verbal echoes of the [Bermuda] pamphlets has, I think, been exaggerated." Oxfordians point to previously acknowledged sources that show some of the words and images in The Tempest may actually derive from Richard Eden's "The Decades of the New Worlde Or West India" (1555) and Desiderius Erasmus's "Naufragium"/"The Shipwreck" (1523). Both sources are mentioned by previous scholars as influencing the composition of The Tempest, and Oxfordians point to new research by Lynne Kositsky and Roger Stritmatter they believe confirms this. Alden T. Vaughan, however, has challenged the conclusions of Kositsky and Stritmatter in his 2008 paper "A Closer Look at the Evidence". In 2009, Stritmatter and Kositsky further developed the arguments against Strachey's influence in a Critical Survey article demonstrating the pervasive influence on The Tempest of the much earlier travel narrative, Richard Eden's 1555 Decades of the New World. CS editor William Leahy, describing the article as a "devastating critique", concluded that "the authors show that the continued support of Strachey as Shakespeare's source is, at the very least, highly questionable."

• Henry VIII was described as a new play in 1613. Oxfordians believe this distinction may simply be the result of Elizabethan marketing, as London diarist Samuel Pepys also referred to Henry VIII as being "new" in 1663, when the play was over 50 years old. Also, many 18th- and 19th-century scholars, including Samuel Johnson, Lewis Theobald, George Steevens, Edmond Malone, and James Halliwell-Phillipps, placed the composition of Henry VIII prior to 1604, as they believed Elizabeth's execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (the then king James I's mother) made any vigorous defence of the Tudors politically inappropriate in the England of James I.

• Stratfordians contend that Macbeth represents the most overwhelming single piece of evidence against the Oxfordian position, asserting the play was written in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, which was discovered on 5 November 1605, a year after Oxford died. In particular, Stratfordians claim the porter's lines about "equivocation" may allude to the trial of Father Garnet in 1606. Oxfordians respond that the concept of "equivocation" was the subject of a 1583 tract by Queen Elizabeth's chief councillor (and Oxford's father-in-law) Lord Burghley, as well as of the 1584 Doctrine of Equivocation by the Spanish prelate Martín de Azpilcueta, which was disseminated across Europe and into England in the 1590s. In addition, A. R. Braunmuller, in the New Cambridge edition, finds the post-1605 arguments inconclusive, and argues only for an earliest date of 1603.

Additional objections

In addition to the problem of Edward de Vere's 1604 death, supporters of the orthodox view dispute all contentions in favour of Oxford. In The Shakespeare Claimants, a 1962 examination of the authorship question, H. N. Gibson concluded that "... on analysis the Oxfordian case appears to me a very weak one". Mainstream critics also assert the connections between Oxford's life and the plots of Shakespeare's plays are conjectural.

More specifically, Professor Jonathan Bate, in The Genius of Shakespeare (1997) stated that Oxfordians can not "provide any explanation for …technical changes attendant on the King's Men's move to the Blackfriars theatre four years after their candidate's death.... Unlike the Globe, the Blackfriars was an indoor playhouse" and so required plays with frequent breaks in order to replace the candles it used for lighting. "The plays written after Shakespeare's company began using the Blackfriars in 1608, Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale for instance, have what most ... of the earlier plays do not have: a carefully planned five-act structure". If new Shakespearean plays were being written especially for presentation at the Blackfriars' theatre after 1608, they could not have been written by Edward de Vere..

Stratfordians also stress that any supposedly special knowledge of the aristocracy appearing in the plays can be more easily explained by Shakespeare of Stratford's life-time of performances before nobility and royalty, and possibly, as Gibson theorizes, "by visits to his patron's house, as Marlowe visited Walsingham."

In addition, Stratfordian scholars point to a poem written circa 1620 by a student at Oxford, William Basse, that mentioned the author Shakespeare died in 1616, which is the year Shakespeare of Stratford deceased and not Edward de Vere. Mainstream critics further claim that if William Shakespeare of Stratford did not write the plays and poems, the number of people needed to suppress this information would have made their attempts highly unlikely to succeed. And John Michell, in Who Wrote Shakespeare, noted that "[a]gainst the Oxford theory are several references to Shakespeare, later than 1604, which imply that the author was then still alive". Also, a method of computerized textual comparison developed by the Claremont Shakespeare Clinic compared the styles of Oxford with Shakespeare and found the odds of Oxford having written Shakespeare as "lower than the odds of getting hit by lightning".

Some Stratfordian academics also argue the Oxford theory is based on simple snobbishness: that anti-Stratfordians reject the idea that the son of a mere tradesman could write the plays and poems of Shakespeare.

Oxfordian responses

Addressing Professor Bate's Blackfriars theory, Oxfordians, such as Richard Malim, point to Allardyce Nicoll's 1958 essay Shakespeare and the Court Masque in which the promenient mainstream critic discussed the assumption that The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Cymbeline and Pericles "were written for the indoor Blackfriars Theatre at which Shakespeare's Company began to act in 1610. Since the assumption has a good deal of scholarly support, perhaps it may prove salutary ... to stress that all available evidence is either completely negative or else runs directly counter to such a supposition". He concluded that "except for the apocryphal The Two Noble Kinsmen, issued 18 years after Shakespeare's death ... we have ... absolutely no justification whatsoever for associating Shakespeare with the Blackfriars at all".

In respect to the mainstream supposition that Shakespeare of Stratford was a full-time actor, J. Thomas Looney stated that, "Although the company with which his name is associated toured frequently and widely in the provinces, and much has been recorded of their doings, no municipal archive, so far as is known, contains a single reference to him." Regarding the Stratfordian claims concerning Shakespeare's many "patrons", Oxfordians point out there is little or no evidence they actually existed, the only indications being the dedications to Southhampton in Lucrece and Venus and Adonis. As mentioned by Gerald E. Bentley in Shakespeare: A Biographical Handbook, "in spite of the thousands of pages that have been written on the Earl of Southampton as the poet's patron, the only facts so far established are Shakespeare's dedication of the two long poem's to him in 1593 and 1594". Furthermore, no record of any payment to Shakespeare from a potential patron has ever been discovered, nor was Charlotte C. Stopes, the author of Southampton's standard biography, able to uncover any evidence of a Southampton–Shakespeare connection beyond the dedications, despite an extensive five-year search.

While disputing how few people were needed to suppress information in Elizabethan England, Oxfordians, such as Price and Anderson, have also noted that by the mid-1590s there appeared in print a series of statements indicating a prominent poet was not who he said he was. These include Ben Jonson's circa 1599 poem "On Poet-Ape" concerning the "poet-ape, that would be thought our chief;" Thomas Bastard's 1598 epigram, concerning a widely admired author who "concealest his name;" Thomas Edwardes' epilogue to his 1595 Narcissus, concerning a disgraced nobleman with a ‘bewitching pen,’ which appeared immediately after his tribute to Venus and Adonis and the 1597-1598 Joseph Hall – John Marston "Labeo" controversy, which called Shakespeare a front man.

In response to John Michell's assertion concerning "several" post-1604 references, Oxfordians note that Michell cites only two: John Davies of Hereford's 1610 "Terence" epigram and the anonymous preface to the 1609 edition of Troilus and Cressida, both of which Ogburn believed generally supported the Oxfordian position, asserting Davies' epigram can be taken to mean "Shake-speare was a nobleman who lost caste by appearing on the stage". Michell acknowledged "No one knows quite what to make of these lines." Regarding the undated and unsigned preface to Troilus and Cressida, its heading contains the words "A never writer to an ever reader. Newes", which Oxfordians interpret as, "A writer who never was to a constant reader" or even "An E.Ver writer to an E.Ver reader." Diana Price believed this phrase also "brought to mind the earl of Oxford's probable posie, ‘Ever or Never.’"

Addressing the various computer comparisons, Oxfordians counter that Shakespearean computer studies are subject to interpretation and have proved inaccurate. For example, the findings of one such study supported the belief "A Funeral Elegy" was written by Shakespeare, with only 3 chances out of 1,000 it was written by someone else. However, its author is now widely believed to have been John Ford. Addressing the issue of style comparison, Oxfordians note that according to Shakespeare scholar Walter Klier, in a recent study published in November 2009 researcher Kurt Kreiler demonstrates that Oxford's juvenilia "represent the path to Shakespeare and already foreshadow the sedulous stylist that Shakespeare was to become."

Contrasting accusations of "snobbishness", Oxfordians note the statement of Canon Professor Vigo Auguste Demant, Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, who stated: "This was not a matter of social class, or education or even of ideas. It concerned the unconscious attitudes of the world and life. Quite early on Looney had to meet the criticism that his was a 'snob' view, holding that a man who had not been to a university and was of bourgeois origin could not be a literary giant. Looney somewhat resented the stupidity of this criticism. Certainly, he maintained, genius arises in any social milieu and is quite independent of formal education (witness Burns). But some background and peculiar personal attitudes indeliberately colour a man's work, and another man without them cannot produce counterfeits." Oxfordians note that figures such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Charlie Chaplin, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Malcolm X , none of whom are obvious candidates for snobbery, have all expressed anti-Stratfordian views.

References in popular culture

• Director Roland Emmerich is currently filming Anonymous, starring Rhys Ifans and Vanessa Redgrave, which posits in cinematic terms how Edward de Vere's writings came to be attributed to William Shakespere of Stratford.
• Oxfordian theory is the basis of Amy Freed's 2001 play The Beard of Avon.
• Oxfordian theory is central to the plot of Sarah Smith's 2003 novel Chasing Shakespeares, which she also adapted into a play.
• Oxfordian theory is present in Jennifer Lee Carrell's thriller Interred With Their Bones.
• The YA novel Shakespeare's Secret by Elise Broach is centered on Oxfordian theory.
• Leslie Howard's classic 1943 anti-Nazi film, Pimpernel Smith, features several speeches by the protagonist "Horatio" Smith, a professor of archaeology at Cambridge, endorsing the Oxfordian theory.

Sir Francis Bacon

Sir Francis Bacon is often cited as a possible author of Shakespeare's plays

Main article: Baconian theory

The leading candidate of the 19th century was Sir Francis Bacon, a major scientist, philosopher, courtier, diplomat, essayist, historian and successful politician, who served as Solicitor General (1607), Attorney General (1613) and Lord Chancellor (1618).

Supporters of the theory, known as Baconians, note that Bacon concluded a 1603 letter with the words "so desiring you to be good to concealed poets", which supporters consider a confession. The hypothesis itself was formally presented by William Henry Smith in 1856, and was expanded the following year by both Smith and Delia Bacon. Notable supporters of the Baconian Theory have included Ignatius L. Donnelly, Friedrich Nietzsche and Harry Stratford Caldecott.

The Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship holds that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the plays conventionally attributed to William Shakespeare. The Baconians hold that scholars are so focused on the details of Shakespeare's life that they neglect to investigate the many facts that they see as connecting Bacon to the Shakespearean work. "It is perfectly true," declared Harry Stratford Caldecott in an 1895 Johannesburg lecture, "that the great bulk of English critical opinion refuses to recognise or admit the fact that there is any question or controversy about the matter. If it did so, it would find itself face to face with a problem which it would be absolutely unable to determine in harmony with preconceived ideas. Consequently, it endeavours to ignore or waive aside any suggestion of a doubt as to the authorship of these immortal works, as if it were an ugly spectre or troublesome nightmare. It is, notwithstanding, a perfectly tangible, flesh-and-blood difficulty and must sooner or later be faced and grappled with in a manly and straightforward way." The Baconians' first objective is to establish reasonable doubt in the Stratford man's authorship claim and then, having justified the need to examine an alternative candidate, cite the many possible connections between Sir Francis Bacon and the Shakespearean work. (See Shakespearean authorship question.)

The main Baconian evidence is founded on the presentation of a motive for concealment, the circumstances surrounding the first known performance of The Comedy of Errors, the close proximity of Bacon to the William Strachey letter upon which many scholars think The Tempest was based, perceived allusions in the plays to Bacon's legal acquaintances, the many supposed parallels with the plays of Bacon's published work and entries in the Promus (his private wastebook), Bacon's interest in civil histories, and ostensible autobiographical allusions in the plays. Since Bacon had first-hand knowledge of government cipher methods, most Baconians see it as feasible that he left his signature somewhere in the Shakespearean work.

As in the cases of every other candidate, the Stratford man is claimed to have acted as a mask for the concealed author. Supporters of the standard view, often referred to as "Stratfordian" or "Mainstream", dispute all contentions in favour of Bacon, and criticize Bacon's poetry as not being comparable in quality with that of Shakespeare.

Terminology

Sir Francis Bacon was a major scientist, philosopher, courtier, diplomat, essayist, historian and successful politician, who served as Solicitor General (1607), Attorney General (1613) and Lord Chancellor (1618).

Those who subscribe to the theory that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the Shakespeare work generally refer to themselves as "Baconians", while dubbing those who maintain the orthodox view that William Shakspeare of Stratford wrote them "Stratfordians".

Baptised as William Shakspere, the Stratford man used several variants of his name during his lifetime, including "Shakespeare". Baconians use "Shakspere" or "Shakespeare" for the glover's son and actor from Stratford, and "Shake-speare" for the author to avoid the assumption that the Stratford man wrote the work.

History of Baconian theory

Three lines of cursive script and a signature on paper.

Sir Francis Bacon's letter to John Davies "so desiring you to be good to concealed poets".

In a letter to the barrister and poet John Davies in 1603, Bacon refers to himself as a "concealed poet". Baconians claim that certain of his contemporaries knew of and hinted at this secret authorship. The satirical poets Joseph Hall (1574-1656) and John Marston (1575-1634) in the so-called Hall-Marston satires, discuss between them a character called Labeo in relation to Shakespeare's long poem "Venus and Adonis" (1593). Perceiving that Hall is criticising "Venus and Adonis" as a lewd Mirror-genre poem, Marston writes "What, not mediocria firma from thy spight?", "mediocria firma" being the Bacon family motto. In 1781, a Warwickshire clergyman and scholar named James Wilmot, having failed to find significant evidence from his research in the Stratford district relating to Shakespeare's authorship, suspected that Shakespeare could not be the author of the works that bear his name. Wilmot was familiar with the writings of Francis Bacon and formed the opinion that he was more likely the real author of the Shakespearean canon. Persuaded of Bacon's authorship of the Shakespeare poems and plays, he related his view to James Cowell, who revealed it in a paper read to the Ipswich Philosophical Society in 1805.

The idea that Sir Francis Bacon penned the Shakespeare work was revived by William Henry Smith in a letter to Lord Ellesmere in 1856. This took the form of a sixteen-page pamphlet entitled Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare's Plays? in which Smith noted several letters to and from Francis Bacon that apparently hinted at his authorship. A year later, both Smith and Delia Bacon published books expounding the Baconian theory. In the latter work, Shakespeare was represented as a group of writers, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, whose agenda was to propagate an anti-monarchial system of philosophy by secreting it in the text.

In 1867, in the library of Northumberland House, one John Bruce happened upon a bundle of bound documents, some of whose sheets had been ripped away. It had comprised numerous of Bacon's oratories and disquisitions, and also, once, the manuscripts of Richard II and Richard III, but these had been removed. On the outer sheet was scrawled repeatedly the names of Bacon and Shakespeare. There were several quotations from the latter's poems and one, too, from Love's Labour's Lost. The Earl of Northumberland sent the bundle to James Spedding, who subsequently penned a thesis on the subject, with which was published a facsimile of the aforementioned cover. Spedding hazarded a 1592 date, making it possibly the earliest extant mention of the Swan of Avon. The Northumberland manuscript, while not proving that Bacon wrote the plays, shows us that Bacon was in possession of their manuscripts. It is not known how he came to own them and why they were destroyed.

After a diligent deciphering of the Elizabethan handwriting in Francis Bacon's wastebook, the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, Constance Mary Fearon Pott (1833-1915) noted that many of the ideas and figures of speech in Bacon's book could also be found in the Shakespearean plays. Pott founded the Francis Bacon Society in 1885 and published her Bacon-centered theory in 1891. In this, Pott developed the view of W.F.C. Wigston, that Francis Bacon was the founding member of the Rosicrucians, a secret society of occult philosophers, and claimed that they secretly created art, literature and drama, including the entire Shakespeare canon, before adding the symbols of the rose and cross to their work.

The late 19th-century interest in the Baconian theory continued the theme that Bacon had secreted encoded messages in the plays. In 1888, Ignatius L. Donnelly, a U.S. Congressman, science fiction author and Atlantis theorist, set out his notion of ciphers in The Great Cryptogram, while Elizabeth Wells Gallup, having read Bacon's account of his 'bi-literal cipher' (in which two fonts were used as a method of encoding in binary format), claimed to have found evidence that Bacon not only authored the Shakespearean works but, along with the Earl of Essex, he was a child of Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester, who had been secretly married. No-one else was able to discern these hidden messages, and the cryptographers William and Elizabeth Friedman showed that the method is unlikely to have been employed.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) expressed interest in and gave credence to the Baconian theory in his writings. The German mathematician Georg Cantor believed that Shakespeare was Bacon, but he was apparently suffering a bout of illness when he researched the subject in 1884. He eventually published two pamphlets supporting the theory in 1896 and 1897.

The American physician Dr Orville Ward Owen (1854-1924) had such conviction in his own cipher method that, in 1909, he began excavating the bed of the River Wye, near Chepstow Castle, in the search of Bacon's original Shakespearean manuscripts. The project, as-yet unsuccessful, ended with his death in 1924.

The American art collector Walter Conrad Arensberg (1878-1954) believed that Bacon had concealed messages in a variety of ciphers, relating to a secret history of the time and the esoteric secrets of the Rosicrucians, in the Shakespearean works. He published a variety of decipherments between 1922 and 1930, concluding finally that, although he had failed to find them, there certainly were concealed messages. He established the Francis Bacon Foundation in California in 1937 and left it his collection of Baconiana.

More recent Baconian theory ignores the esoteric following that the theory had earlier attracted. Whereas, previously, the main proposed reason for secrecy was Bacon's desire for high office, this theory posits that his main motivation for concealment was the completion of his Great Instauration project. The argument runs that, in order to advance the project's scientific component, he intended to set up new institutes of experimentation to gather the data (his scientific "Histories") to which his inductive method could be applied. He needed to attain high office, however, to gain the requisite influence, and being known as a dramatist (a low-class profession) would have impeded his prospects. Realising that play-acting was used by the ancients "as a means of educating men's minds to virtue", and being "strongly addicted to the theatre" himself, he is claimed to have set out the otherwise-unpublished moral philosophical component of his Great Instauration project in the Shakespearean work (moral "Histories"). In this way, he could influence the nobility through dramatic performance with his observations on what constitutes "good" government (as in Prince Hal's relationship with the Chief Justice in Henry IV, Part 2).

Autobiographical evidence

It is known that, as early as 1595, Bacon employed scriveners, which, one could argue, would protect his anonymity and account for Heminge and Condell, two actors in Shakspeare's company, remarking about Shakspere that "wee [sic] have scarce received from him a blot in his papers". Baconians point out that Bacon's rise to the post of Attorney General in 1613 coincided with the end of Shakespeare the author's output. They also stress that he was the only authorship candidate still alive when the First Folio was published and that it occurred in a period (1621-1626) when Bacon was publishing his work for posterity after his fall from office gave him the free time.

Henry VIII (1613) may be interpreted as alluding to Bacon's fall from office in 1621, suggesting that the play had been altered at least five years after Shakspere's death in 1616. The argument relates to Cardinal Wolsey's forfeiture of the Great Seal in the play, which might be construed as departing from the facts of history to mirror Bacon's own loss. Bacon lost office on a charge of accepting bribes to influence his judgment of legal cases, whereas Wolsey's crime was to petition the Pope to delay sanctioning King Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Nevertheless, in 3.2.125-8, just before the Great Seal is reclaimed, King Henry's main concern is an inventory of Wolsey's wealth that has inadvertently been delivered to him:

King Henry. [...] The several parcels of his Plate, his Treasure,

Rich stuffs, and ornaments of household, which

I find at such a proud rate, that it outspeaks

Possession of a subject.

A few lines later, Wolsey loses the Seal with the stage direction:

Enter to Cardinal Wolsey the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Earl of Surrey

and the Lord Chamberlaine.

However, in history, only the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk performed this task, and Shakespeare has inexplicably added the Earl of Surrey and the Lord Chamberlaine. In Bacon's case, King James "commissioned the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlaine, and the Earl of Arundel, to receive and take charge of it". Given that Thomas Howard was the 2nd Earl of Arundel and Surrey, then the two noblemen that Shakespeare has added may be construed as references to two of the four that attended Bacon.

Credentials for authorship

"If we must look for an author outside of Shakespeare himself," said Caldecott, "the only possible candidate that presents himself is Francis Bacon." Proposed the illustrious Shakespearean scholar Horace Howard Furness, "Had the plays come down to us anonymously – had the labour of discovering the author been imposed upon future generations – we could have found no one of that day but Francis Bacon to whom to assign the crown. In this case it would have been resting now upon his head by almost common consent." "He was," agreed Caldecott, "all the things that the plays of Shakespeare demand that the author should be – a man of vast and boundless ambition and attainments, a philosopher, a poet, a lawyer, a statesman."

There is indeed much evidence to suggest that Bacon had the credentials to write the Shakespearean work. In relation to the Stratford man's extensive vocabulary, we have the words of Dr Samuel Johnson, author of the first dictionary: "[... A] Dictionary of the English language might be compiled from Bacon's writing alone". The poet Percy Bysshe Shelly testifies against the notion that Bacon's was an unwaveringly dry legal style: "Lord Bacon was a poet. His language has a sweet majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his intellect satisfies the intellect [...]." Ben Jonson writes in his First-Folio tribute to "The Author Mr William Shakespeare",

Leave thee alone for the comparison

Of all that insolent Greece and haughtie [sic] Rome

Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come.

"There can be no doubt," said Caldecott, "that Ben Jonson was in possession of the secret composition of Shakespeare's works." An intimate of both Bacon and Shakespeare – he was for a time the former's stenographer and Latin interpreter, and had his debut as a playwright produced by the latter – he was placed perfectly to be in the know. He did not name Shakespeare among the sixteen greatest cards of the epoch but wrote of Bacon that he "hath filled up all the numbers, and performed that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece or to haughty Rome [...] so that he may be named, and stand as the mark and acme of our language." "If Ben Jonson knew that the name 'Shakespeare' was a mere cloak for Bacon, it is easy enough to reconcile the application of the same language indifferently to one and the other. Otherwise," declared Caldecott, "it is not easily explicable."

Some time subsequent to Shakespeare's expiry, Jonson tackled the panoptic task of setting down the First Folio and casting away the originals. This was in 1623, when Bacon had lapsed into penury. Jonson would have been keen to allay his friend's straits, and the folio's yield would have fitted the bill nicely.

In 1645, there was printed a strange volume entitled The Great Assizes Holden in Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours. Atop the mountain sat Apollo and, immediately beneath him, Bacon ("The Lord Verulam, Chancellor of Parnassus"), followed by 25 writers and poets, and then, second last at number 26 (and only as a "juror"), "William Shakespere". This artifact has frequently been interpreted as suggesting that Francis Bacon was miles ahead of his coevals and second only to Apollo in the poetical stakes.

That Bacon took a keen interest in civil history is evidenced in his book History of the Reign of Henry VII (1621), his article the Memorial of Elizabeth (1608) and his letter to King James in 1610, lobbying for financial support to indite a history of Great Britain: "I shall have the advantage which almost no writer of history hath had, in that I shall write of times not only since I could remember, but since I could observe."

Bacon and Shake-speare cover completely the monarchs of the period 1377 to 1603 without duplicating one another's historical ground. In 1623, Bacon gave different excuses to Prince Charles for not working on a commissioned treatise on Henry VIII (which had already been covered by the Shake-speare play in 1613). In the end, he wrote only two pages.

The Tempest

Numerous scholars believe that the main source for Shake-speare's The Tempest was a letter written by William Strachey known as the True Reportory (TR) sent back to the Virginia Company from the newly established Virginia colony in 1610, about a year before the play's first known performance. It was discovered when Richard Hakluyt, one of the eight names on the First Virginia Charter (1606), died in 1616 and a copy was found among his papers. Scholars have suggested that the letter was “circulated in manuscript” without restriction and that “there seems to have been an opportunity for Shakespeare to see the unpublished report, or even to have met Strachey”. However, Baconians point to evidence that the letter was restricted to members of the Virginia Council which included Sir Francis Bacon (and 50 other Lords and Earls) but not William Shakspere. For example, Item 27 of the governing Council’s instructions to Deputy Governor Sir Thomas Gates before he set out for the colony charges him to “take especial care what relacions [accounts] come into England and what lettres are written and that all thinges of that nature may be boxed up and sealed and sent to first of [sic] the Council here, ... and that at the arrivall and retourne of every shippinge you endeavour to knowe all the particular passages and informacions given on both sides and to advise us accordingly." Louis B. Wright explains why the Virginia Company was so keen to control information: “[the TR gave] a discouraging picture of Jamestown, but it is significant that it had to wait fifteen years to see print, for the Virginia Company just at that time was subsidizing preachers and others to give glowing descriptions of Virginia and its prospects". Baconians argue that it would have been against the interests of any Council member, whose investment was at risk, to present a copy of the TR to Shakspere, whose business was public.

On November 1610, conscious that the criticisms of the returning colonists might jeopardize the recruitment of new settlers and investment, the Virginia Company published the propagandist True Declaration (TD) which was designed to confute “such scandalous reports as have tended to the disgrace of so worthy an enterprise” and was intended to “wash away those spots, which foul mouths (to justify their own disloyalty) have cast upon so fruitful, so fertile, and so excellent a country”. The TD relied on the TR and other minor sources and it is clear from its use of “I” that it had a single author. There are also verbal parallels between (a) the TD, and (b) Bacon's Advancement of Learning that suggest that Sir Francis Bacon as Solicitor General might have written the TD and so, by implication, had access to the TR which sourced The Tempest. Some examples of these are presented together with their correspondence to (c) the Shake-speare work.

Parallel 1

(a) The next Fountaine [sic] of woes was secure negligence

(b) but to drink indeed of the true fountains of learning (p.121)

(c) Thersites. Would the fountain of your mind were clear again,

that I might water an ass at it!

(1602-3 Troilus and Cressida, 3.3.305-6)

Parallel 2

(a) For if the country be barren or the situation contagious as famine

and sickness destroy our nation, we strive against the stream of reason

and make ourselves the subjects of scorn and derision.

(b) whereby divinity hath been reduced into an art, as into a cistern, and

the streams of doctrine or positions fetched and derived from thence. (p.293)

(c) Timon. Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth,

That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,

And drown themselves in riot!

(1604-7 Timon of Athens, 4.1.26-8)

Lysander. scorn and derision never come in tears:

(1594-5 A Midsummer Night's Dream, 3.2.123)

Parallel 3

(a) The emulation of Cæsar and Pompey watered the plains of Pharsaly

with blood and distracted the sinews of the Roman monarchy.

(b) We will begin, therefore, with this precept, according to the ancient

opinion, that the sinews of wisdom are slowness of belief and distrust (p.273)

(c) Henry V. Now are we well resolved; and, by God's help,

And yours, the noble sinews of our power,

France being ours, we'll bend it to our awe,

Or break it all to pieces:

(1599 Henry V, 1.2.222-5)

William Strachey went on to write The History of Travel into Virginia Britannica, a book that avoided duplicating the details of the TR. First published in 1849, three manuscript copies survive dedicated to Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland; Sir William Apsley, Purveyor of his Majesty’s Navy Royal; and Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor. In the dedication to Bacon, which must have been composed after he became Lord Chancellor in 1618, Strachey writes “Your Lordship ever approving himself a most noble fautor [supporter] of the Virginia Plantation, being from the beginning (with other lords and earls) of the principal counsel applied to propagate and guide it”.

The 1610-11 dating of The Tempest however, has been challenged by a number of scholars, most recently by researchers Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky who argue that Strachey's narrative could not have furnished an inspiration for Shakespeare, claiming that Strachey's letter was not put into its extant form until after The Tempest had already been performed on Nov. 1, 1611. The notion of an early date for The Tempest has in fact a long history in Shakespearean scholarship, going back to 19th century scholars such as Hunter and Elze, who both critiqued the widespread belief that the play depended on the Strachey letter.

Gray's Inn revels 1594-95

Gray's Inn law school traditionally held revels over Christmas: dancing and feasting were complemented by plays and masques. The evidence suggests that, prior to the revels of 1594 and '95, all performed plays were amateur productions. In his commentary on the Gesta Grayorum, a contemporary account of the 1594-95 revels, Desmond Bland informs us that they were "intended as a training ground in all the manners that are learned by nobility [...:] dancing, music, declamation, acting." James Spedding, the Victorian editor of Bacon's Works, thought that Sir Francis Bacon was involved in the writing of this account.

William Shakespeare remunerated for a performance at Whitehall on Innocents Day 1594.

The Gesta Grayorum is a pamphlet of 68 pages first published in 1688. It informs us that The Comedy of Errors received its first known performance at these revels at 21:00 on 28 December 1594 (Innocents Day) when "a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the Players [...]." Whoever the players were, there is evidence that Shakespeare and his company were not among them: according to the royal Chamber accounts, dated 15 March 1595 – see Figure – he and the Lord Chamberlain's Men were performing for the Queen at Greenwich on Innocents Day. E.K. Chambers informs us that "the Court performances were always at night, beginning about 10pm and ending at 1am", so their presence at both performances is highly unlikely; furthermore, the Gray's Inn Pension Book, which recorded all payments made by the Gray's Inn committee, exhibits no payment either to a dramatist or to professional company for this play. Baconians interpret this as a suggestion that, following precedent, The Comedy of Errors was both written and performed by members of the Inns of Court as part of their participation in the Gray's Inn celebrations. One problem with this argument is that the Gesta Grayorum refers to the players as "a Company of base and common fellows", which would apply well to a professional theatre company, but not to law students. But, given the jovial tone of the Gesta, and that the description occurred during a skit in which a "Sorcerer or Conjuror" was accused of causing "disorders with a play of errors or confusions", Baconians interpret it as merely a comic description of the Gray's Inn players.

Gray's Inn actually had a company of players during the revels. The Gray's Inn Pension Book records on 11 February 1595 that "one hyndred marks [£66.67] [are] to be layd out & bestowyd upon the gentlemen for their sports and shewes this Shrovetyde at the court before the Queens Majestie ...."

Francis Bacon's letter either to Lord Burghley (before 1598) or Lord Somerset (1613) "I am sorry the joint masque from the four Inns of Court faileth".

There is, most importantly to the Baconians' argument, evidence that Bacon had control over the Gray's Inn players. In a letter either to Lord Burghley, dated before 1598, or to the Earl of Somerset in 1613, he writes, "I am sorry the joint masque from the four Inns of Court faileth [.... T]here are a dozen gentlemen of Gray's Inn that will be ready to furnish a masque". The dedication to a masque by Francis Beaumont performed at Whitehall in 1613 describes Bacon as the "chief contriver" of its performances at Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple. He also appears to have been their treasurer prior to the 1594-95 revels.

The discrepancy surrounding the whereabouts of the Chamberlain's Men is normally explained by theatre historians as an error in the Chamber Accounts. W.W. Greg suggested the following explanation:

"[T]he accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber show payments to this company [the Chamberlain's Men] for performances before the Court on both 26 Dec. and 28 Dec [...]. These accounts, however, also show a payment to the Lord Admiral's men in respect of 28 Dec. It is true that instances of two court performances on one night do occur elsewhere, but in view of the double difficulty involved, it is perhaps best to assume that in the Treasurer's accounts, 28 Dec. is an error for 27 Dec."

Verbal parallels

Gesta Grayorum

'Greater lessens the smaller' figure from Gesta Grayorum.

The final paragraph of the Gesta Grayorum – see Figure – uses a "greater lessens the smaller" construction that occurs in an exchange from the Merchant of Venice (1594-97), 5.1.92-7:

Ner. When the moon shone we did not see the candle

Por. So doth the greater glory dim the less,

A substitute shines brightly as a King

Until a King be by, and then his state

Empties itself, as doth an inland brooke

Into the main of waters ...

The Merchant of Venice uses both the same theme as the Gesta Grayorum (see Figure) and the same three examples to illustrate it – a subject obscured by royalty, a small light overpowered by that of a heavenly body and a river diluted on reaching the sea. In an essay from 1603, Bacon makes further use of two of these examples: "The second condition [of perfect mixture] is that the greater draws the less. So we see that when two lights do meet, the greater doth darken and drown the less. And when a small river runs into a greater, it loseth both the name and stream." A figure similar to "loseth both the name and stream" occurs in Hamlet (1600-01), 3.1.87-8:

Hamlet. With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Bacon was usually careful to cite his sources but does not mention Shakespeare once in any of his work. Baconians claim, furthermore, that, if the Gesta Grayorum was circulated prior to its publication in 1688 – and no one seems to know if it was – it was probably only among members of the Inns of Court.

Promus

In the 19th century, a notebook entitled the Promus of Formularies and Elegancies was discovered. It contained 1,655 hand written proverbs, metaphors, aphorisms, salutations and other miscellany. Although some entries appear original, many are drawn from the Latin and Greek writers Seneca, Horace, Virgil, Ovid; John Heywood's Proverbes (1562); Michel de Montaigne's Essays (1575), and various other French, Italian and Spanish sources. A section at the end aside, the writing was, by Sir Edward Maunde-Thompson's reckoning, in Bacon's hand; indeed, his signature appears on folio 115 verso. Only two folios of the notebook were dated, the third sheet (5 December 1594) and the 32nd (27 January 1595 [that is, 1596]). Many of these entries also appear in Shakespeare's First Folio:

Parallel 1

Parolles. So I say both of Galen and Paracelsus (1603-5 All's Well That Ends Well, 2.3.11)

Galens compositions not Paracelsus separations (Promus, folio 84, verso)

Parallel 2

Launce. Then may I set the world on wheels, when she can spin for her living (1589-93, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 3.1.307-8)

Now toe on her distaff then she can spynne/The world runs on wheels (Promus, folio 96, verso)

Parallel 3

Hostesse. O, that right should o'rcome might. Well of sufferance, comes ease (1598, Henry IV, Part 2, 5.4.24-5)

Might overcomes right/Of sufferance cometh ease (Promus, folio 103, recto)

The orthodox view is that these were commonplace phrases; Baconians claim the occurrence in the last two examples of two ideas from the same Promus folio in the same Shakespeare speech is unlikely.

Published work

There is an example in Troilus and Cressida (2.2.163) which shows that Bacon and Shakespeare shared the same interpretation of an Aristotelian view:

Hector. Paris and Troilus, you have both said well,

And on the cause and question now in hand

Have glozed, but superficially: not much

Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought

Unfit to hear moral philosophy:

The reasons you allege do more conduce

To the hot passion of distemper'd blood

Bacon's similar take reads thus: "Is not the opinion of Aristotle very wise and worthy to be regarded, 'that young men are no fit auditors of moral philosophy', because the boiling heat of their affections is not yet settled, nor tempered with time and experience?"

What Aristotle actually said was slightly different: "Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; [...] and further since he tends to follow his passions his study will be vain and unprofitable [...]." The added coincidence of heat and passion and the replacement of "political science" with "moral philosophy" is employed by both Shakespeare and Bacon. However, Shakespeare's play precedes Bacon's publication, allowing the possibility of the latter borrowing from the former.

Raleigh's execution

Spedding suggests that lines in Macbeth refer to Sir Walter Raleigh's execution, which occurred two years after Shakespeare of Stratford's death and fourteen years after the Earl of Oxford's. The lines in question are spoken by Malcolm about the execution of the "disloyall traytor [sic] / The Thane of Cawdor" (1.2.53):

King. Is execution done on Cawdor?

Or not those in Commission yet return'd?

Malcolme. My Liege, they are not yet come back,

But I have spoke with one that saw him die:

Who did report, that very frankly hee [sic]

Confess'd his Treasons, implor'd your Highnesse [sic] Pardon

And set forth a deepe [sic] Repentance:

Nothing in his Life became him,

Like the leaving it. He dy'de [sic],

As one that had been studied in his death,

To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd,

As 'twere a carelesse [sic] Trifle.(1.4.1)

Several sources have remarked upon Raleigh's frivolity in the face of his impending execution and the assertion that "[the Commission who tried him] are not yet come back" could refer to the fact that his execution was swift: it took place the day after his trial for treason. Raphael Holinshed, the main source for Macbeth, mentions "the thane of Cawder [sic] being condemned at Fores of treason against the king" without further details about his execution, so whoever wrote the lines in the play went beyond the original source.

In Raleigh's trial at Winchester on 17 November 1603, his statement was read out: "Lord Cobham offered me 10,000 crowns for the furthering the peace between England and Spain". In 1.2.60-4 of Macbeth, the King's messenger reports on the king of Norway, who has been assisted by the thane of Cawdor:

Rosse. That now

Sweno, the Norwayes [sic] king, craves composition:

Nor would we deigne [sic] him burial of his men,

Till he disbursed, at Saint Colmes ynch [sic],

Ten thousand Dollars to our general use.

Shake-speare was known for his use of anagrams (e.g. the character Moth in Love's Labour's Lost represents Thomas Nashe) and here he has altered Cawder to Cawdor, an anagram of "coward". Some Baconians see this as an allusion to Raleigh's poem the night before his execution.

Cowards [may] fear to die; but courage stout,

Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.

Some scholars believe that Macbeth was later altered by Middleton, but a reference to Raleigh's execution would be particularly advantageous to the Baconian theory because Bacon was one of the six Commissioners from the Privy Council appointed to examine Raleigh's case.

But more than one Elizabethan traitor put on a brave show for his execution. In 1793, George Steevens suggested that the speech was an allusion to the death of the Earl of Essex in 1601 (a date that does not conflict with Shakespeare's or Oxford's authorship): "The behaviour of the thane of Cawdor corresponds in almost every circumstance with that of the unfortunate Earl of Essex, as related by Stow, p. 793. His asking the Queen's forgiveness, his confession, repentance, and concern about behaving with propriety on the scaffold are minutely described." As Steevens notes, Essex was a close friend of Shakespeare's patron, the Earl of Southampton. Essex also employed Bacon as an adviser in the latter's early career in Parliament, until Essex fell out of favour and was prosecuted with Bacon's help.

Most editors of Macbeth simply assume the speech to be fictional and not a deliberate allusion to a specific event.

Critical reception

Mainstream scholars reject the Baconian theory (along with other "alternative authorship" theories), citing a range of evidence – not least of all its reliance on a conspiracy theory. As far back as 1879, a New York Herald scribe bemoaned the waste of "considerable blank ammunition [...] in this ridiculous war between the Baconians and the Shakespearians", while Richard Garnett declared that "Baconians talk as if Bacon had nothing to do but to write his play at his chambers and send it to his factotum, Shakespeare, at the other end of the town."

Most modern critics spurn the anti-Stratfordian claim that Shakespeare had not the education, to write the plays: as the son of an Alderman, he grew up in a family of some importance in Stratford. It would be surprising had he not attended the local grammar school, as such institutions were founded to educate boys of Shakespeare's moderately well-to-do standing, especially since his father John Shakespeare, one of the wealthiest men in Stratford, was an Alderman and later High Bailiff of the corporation.

Stratfordian scholars also frequently cite Occam's razor, the principle that the simplest and best-evidenced explanation (in this case that the plays were written by Shakespeare of Stratford) is likely the correct one. A critique of all alternative authorship theories may be found in Samuel Schoenbaum's Shakespeare's Lives. Questioning Bacon's ability as a poet, Sidney Lee asserted: "[...] such authentic examples of Bacon's efforts to write verse as survive prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that, great as he was as a prose writer and a philosopher, he was incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shakespeare."

Oxfordian scholars (those who believe that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford wrote the works of Shakespeare) have cited various examples they say imply that the writer of the plays and poems was dead prior to 1609, when ShakeSpeare’s Sonnets first appeared with the enigmatic words “our ever-living Poet” on the title page. These researchers claim that the words “ever-living” rarely, if ever, refer to someone who is actually alive. Additionally, they assert that 1604 is the year that Shakespeare “mysteriously” stopped writing. Oxfordians assert these claims give a boost to the Oxfordian candidacy, as Bacon, (and Shakespeare of Stratford) lived well past the 1609 publication of the Sonnets. See the article on Oxfordian theory for additional information on Oxfordian issues that may relate to the Bacon candidacy.

Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe has been cited as a possible author for Shakespeare's works

The Marlovian theory of Shakespeare authorship holds first that the famous Elizabethan poet, playwright and secret agent Christopher Marlowe did not die in Deptford on 30th May 1593 as the historical records show, his death having been faked, and second that his survival allowed him to be the main author of the poems and plays attributed to William Shakespeare.

Marlovians (as those who subscribe to the theory are usually called) claim that Marlowe's biographers approach his alleged death in the wrong way by trying to work out why he died, which leads to almost total disagreement. They say that a more productive question is what, in the circumstances, was the most logical reason for the meeting at which he was supposedly killed—and conclude that it would have been to fake his death. And if he did survive, they point to how universally accepted is Marlowe's influence on Shakespeare, how indistinguishable their works were to start with (surprising given their very different levels of education) and how seamless was the transition from Marlowe's works to Shakespeare's immediately following the apparent death.

Against the suggestion that his death was faked are that it was accepted as genuine by no fewer than sixteen jurors at an inquest held by the Queen's personal coroner, that everyone clearly thought that he was dead at the time, and that there is a complete lack of direct evidence supporting his survival beyond 1593. As for his writing Shakespeare's works, it is generally believed that Marlowe's style—and indeed his whole world-view—are too different to Shakespeare's for this to have been possible, and that all the direct evidence in any case points to Shakespeare as being the true author.

Marlovian theory

The first person to propose that the works of Shakespeare were by Marlowe was Wilbur G. Zeigler, who presented a case for it in the preface to his 1895 novel, It was Marlowe: a story of the secret of three centuries and the first essay solely on the subject was written by Archie Webster in 1923. These two were published before Leslie Hotson's discovery in 1925 of the inquest on Marlowe's death. Since then, there have nevertheless been several other books supporting the idea—a list is given below—but perhaps the two most influential were those by Calvin Hoffman (1955) and A.D. Wraight (1994). Hoffman's main argument centred on similarities between the styles of the two writers, particularly in the use of similar wordings or ideas—called "parallelisms". Wraight, following Webster, delved more into what she saw as the true meaning of Shakespeare's sonnets.

To their contributions should perhaps also be added that of Michael Rubbo, an Australian documentary film maker who, in 2001, made the TV film Much Ado About Something in which the Marlovian theory was explored in some detail, and the creation in 2009 of the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society which has continued to draw the theory to the public's attention.

Marlowe's death

For Marlovians, the arguments about his 'death' have changed over the years from (1) thinking that because he wrote 'Shakespeare' it must have been faked; to (2) challenging the details of the inquest to show that it must have been; to (3) claiming that the circumstances surrounding it suggest that the faking is the most likely scenario, whether he went on to write 'Shakespeare' or not.

In his Shakespeare and Co., however, referring to the documentation concerning Marlowe's death, Stanley Wells reflected the view of virtually all scholars that Marlowe did die then when he wrote: "The unimpugnable documentary evidence deriving from legal documents ... makes this one of the best recorded episodes in English literary history" and "Even before these papers turned up there was ample evidence that Marlowe died a violent death in Deptford in 1593."

The Inquest

According to the inquest on Marlowe's death, he died on 30 May 1593 as the result of a knife wound above the right eye inflicted upon him by someone with whom he had been dining, Ingram Frizer. Together with two other men, Robert Poley and Nicholas Skeres, they had spent that day together at the Deptford home of Eleanor Bull, a respectable widow who apparently offered, for payment, room and refreshment for such private meetings.

Two days later, on 1 June, the inquest was held there by no less a figure than the Coroner of The Queen's Household, William Danby, and a 16-man jury found the killing to have been in self defence. The body of this "famous gracer of tragedians", as Robert Greene had called him, was buried the same day in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of St. Nicholas, Deptford. The Queen sanctioned Frizer's pardon just four weeks later.

Of those books or articles written about—or including an explanation of—Marlowe's death over the past twenty years or so, most of the authors, whilst accepting that Marlowe did actually die at that time, nevertheless believe that the witnesses were probably lying. Usually they maintain that it was in fact a murder, not self defence, but Marlovians go one step further, and argue that if Frizer, Poley and Skeres could lie about what happened, they could just as easily have been lying about the identity of the corpse itself. In other words, that although they claimed it was Marlowe's—and as far as we know they were the only ones there in a position to identify him—it was in fact someone else's body that the jury was called upon to examine.

Some commentators have found details of the killing itself unconvincing. There is no reason to doubt the honesty of the jury as a whole at Marlowe's inquest, however, so the witnesses' report to the jury was certainly plausible enough to satisfy them. Where Marlovians diverge from the orthodox approach is not to challenge the details of the tale apparently told by the witnesses, but to reframe the basic question from "why was Marlowe killed?" to "what was the purpose of the meeting?"

Background

An important point for Marlovians is that Marlowe was in deep trouble at the time of his death. Accusations of his having persuaded others to atheism were coming to the Privy Council thick and fast and, whether true or not, he was certainly suspected of having written an atheistic book which was being used for subversive purposes. For such crimes, trial and execution would have been almost guaranteed. Within the past two months, at least three people, Henry Barrow, John Greenwood and John Penry, had gone to the scaffold for offences no worse than this.

The Witnesses

Among Marlowe's close friends was Thomas Walsingham who, being the son of Sir Francis Walsingham's first cousin, another Thomas, had worked within Sir Francis's network of secret agents and intelligencers. Marlowe also seems to have been involved in this sort of work, and was probably still in the employ of Lord Burghley and Sir Robert Cecil. As Park Honan says: "One may infer that (they) were inconvenienced by Marlowe's death". Marlovians therefore find it significant that every person involved in the incident seems to have been associated in one way or another either with his friend Walsingham (Frizer and Skeres) or with his employers the Cecils (Poley, Bull and Danby). The most likely reason for the get-together, they say, would have therefore been to save him in some way from the peril facing him. Killing him would hardly serve, so, given the dead body, they claim that the faking of his death is the only scenario to fit all of the facts as known. That Poley, Frizer and Skeres all made a living from being able to lie convincingly may have been relevant too.

The Coroner

Support for the possible involvement of people in high places (whether it was to have Marlowe assassinated or to fake his death) has recently come to light with the discovery that the inquest was probably illegal. The inquest should have been supervised and enrolled by the local County Coroner, with the Queen's Coroner being brought in by him only if he happened to know that it was within 12 (Tudor) miles of where the Queen was in residence (i.e. that it was "within the verge") and, if so, for it to be run by both of them jointly. Marlovians argue that therefore the only way for Danby to have finished up doing it on his own—given that it was only just within the verge, the Court in fact some 16 of today's statute miles away by road—would be because he knew about the killing before it actually occurred, and just "happened" to be there to take charge. If there was a deception, they say, Danby must have been involved in it and thus almost certainly with the tacit approval of the Queen. This does, of course, give as much support to David Riggs's theory that the Queen ordered Marlowe's death as it does to the faked death theory.

The Body

If a death is to be faked, however, a substitute body has to be found, and it was David A. More who first identified for Marlovians a far more likely "victim" than had been suggested earlier. On the evening before their 10 a.m. meeting at Deptford, at a most unusual time for a hanging, John Penry, about a year older than Marlowe, was hanged (for writing subversive literature) just two miles from Deptford, and there is no record of what happened to the body. Also of possible relevance is that the same William Danby would have been responsible for authorizing exactly what was to happen to Penry's corpse. Those who reject the theory claim that there would have been far too many obvious signs that the corpse had been hanged for it to have been used in this way, although Marlovians say that Danby, being solely in charge, would have been able quite easily to ensure that such evidence remained hidden from the jury.

Marlowe and Shakespeare

The "Shakespeare" Argument

The mainstream view is that the author known as "Shakespeare" was the same William Shakespeare who was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, moved to London and became an actor, and "sharer" (part-owner) of the acting company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which owned the Globe Theatre and the Blackfriars Theatre. Most Marlovians are happy to accept these biographical details for the man known as "Shakespeare", and accept that people at the time probably thought he had written the works attributed to him. However, they believe that people may well have been deliberately deceived into thinking this, his having in fact been only a "front" for the real author.

Generally speaking, Marlovians base their argument far less upon the alleged unsuitability of Shakespeare as the author—the approach favoured by most other anti-Stratfordians (those who challenge the belief that the works were by William Shakespeare of Stratford)—than upon how much more suitable Marlowe would have been, had he survived, than anyone, including Shakespeare. Marlowe was a brilliant poet and dramatist already, the main creator of so-called "Shakespearean" blank verse drama, and had precisely the education, the intellectual contacts, and the access to literature that one might have expected of the author of Shakespeare's works. Furthermore—given that so many unanswered questions remain over his death—if it really had been faked, they point out that he would have had far better reasons than any other authorship "candidate" both for continuing to write plays, and for being compelled to do so under someone else's name.

A central plank in the Marlovian theory is that the first clear association of William Shakespeare with the works bearing his name was just thirteen days after Marlowe's supposed death. Shakespeare's first published work, Venus and Adonis, was registered with the Stationers' Company on 18 April, 1593, with no named author, and appears to have been on sale—now with his name included—by 12 June, when a copy is first known to have been bought.

Stanley Wells again summarizes the reasons why Shakespearean scholars in general utterly reject any such idea: "All of this [documentary evidence of his death] compounds the initial and inherent ludicrousness of the idea that he went on to write the works of William Shakespeare while leaving not the slightest sign of his continuing existence for at least twenty years. During this period he is alleged to have produced a string of masterpieces which must be added to those he had already written, which no one in the busy and gossipy world of the theatre knew to be his, and for which he was willing to allow his Stratford contemporary to receive all the credit and to reap all the rewards."

Internal evidence

Style

As mentioned earlier, it is generally held in the academic world that Marlowe's style, themes, and indeed his whole world-view, are too different to Shakespeare's to allow the Marlovian claims and also that all direct evidence points to Shakespeare being the true author.

The styles of Marlowe and Shakespeare certainly differ in many ways. Some of these differences are only statistically apparent (see Stylometry), and some more immediately noticeable by the audience or reader. However, despite the fact that their ages were almost identical, there is little if any overlap of the periods when they were writing. This means that one cannot in either case be certain that these differences are because the works were written by two different people, as orthodoxy has it, or because they were written by the same person, but at different times, as Marlovians believe.

With stylometric approaches, for example, it is possible to identify certain characteristics which are very typical of Shakespeare, such as the use of particular poetic techniques or the frequency with which various common words are used, and these have been used to argue that Marlowe could not have written Shakespeare's works. In every case so far where these data have been plotted over time, however, Marlowe's corpus has been found to fit just where Shakespeare's would have been, had he written anything before the early 1590s as all of Marlowe's were. On the other hand, whereas stylometry might be useful in discerning where two sets of work are not by the same person, it can be used with less confidence to show that they are. This was something that T.C. Mendenhall, whose work some Marlovians have nevertheless thought proves their theory, was at pains to point out.

As for the less quantifiable differences—mainly to do with the content, and of which there are quite a lot—Marlovians suggest that they are quite predictable, given that under their scenario Marlowe would have undergone a significant transformation of his life—with new locations, new experiences, new learning, new interests, new friends and acquaintances, possibly a new political agenda, new paymasters, new performance spaces, new actors, and maybe (not all agree on this) a new collaborator, Shakespeare himself.

Much has been made—particularly by Calvin Hoffman—of so-called "parallelisms" between the two authors. For example, when Marlowe's "Jew of Malta", Barabas, sees Abigail on a balcony above him, he says

But stay! What star shines yonder in the east?
The lodestar of my life, if Abigail!

Most people would immediately recognize how similar this is to Romeo's famous

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!

when she appears on the balcony above. There are many such examples, but the problem with using them as an argument is that it really is not possible to be sure whether they happened because they were by the same author, or because they were—whether consciously or unconsciously—simply copied by Shakespeare from Marlowe. It is worth noting, however, that Marlowe is the only contemporary dramatist from whom he copies so much, and that the influence Marlowe had on Shakespeare is universally acknowledged.

Shakespeare's Sonnets

The current preference among Shakespearean scholars is to deny that the Sonnets are autobiographical. Marlovians say that this is because—other than the references to his name "Will" and a possible pun on "Hathaway"—there is no connection between what is said in the Sonnets and anything that is known about Shakespeare's life. In contrast, assuming that Marlowe did survive and was exiled in disgrace, Marlovians claim that the Sonnets reflect what must have happened to him after that.

In Sonnet 25, for instance, a Marlovian interpretation would note that something unforeseen ("unlooked for") has happened to the poet, which will deny him the chance to boast of "public honour and proud titles", and which seems to have led to some enforced travel far away, possibly even overseas (26-28, 34, 50-51, 61). They would note that this going away seems to be a one-off event (48), and whatever it was, it is clearly also associated with his being "in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes", his "outcast state" (29), and his "blots" and "bewailed guilt" (36). The poet also says that he has been "made lame by fortune's dearest spite" (37). Each one of these segments, along with many other throughout the Sonnets, might be seen by a Marlovian as reflecting some aspect of Marlowe's alleged faked death and subsequent life.

Marlovians also claim that their interpretation allows more of Shakespeare's actual words to be interpreted as meaning literally what they say than is otherwise possible. For example, they can take "a wretch's knife" (74) to mean a wretch's knife, rather than assume that he must have really meant Old Father Time's scythe, take an "outcast state"(29) to mean an outcast state, not just a feeling that nobody likes him, and accept that when he says his "name receives a brand" (111) it means that his reputation has been permanently damaged, and not simply that acting is considered a somewhat disreputable profession. Jonathan Bate nevertheless shows why Shakespeare scholars claim that "Elizabethans did not write coded autobiography".

Clues in the Plays

Faked (or wrongly presumed) death, disgrace, banishment, and changed identity are of course major ingredients in Shakespeare's plays, and Stephen Greenblatt puts it fairly clearly: "Again and again in his plays, an unforeseen catastrophe...suddenly turns what had seemed like happy progress, prosperity, smooth sailing into disaster, terror, and loss. The loss is obviously and immediately material, but it is also, and more crushingly, a loss of identity. To wind up on an unknown shore, without one’s friends, habitual associates, familiar network—this catastrophe is often epitomized by the deliberate alteration or disappearance of the name and, with it, the alteration or disappearance of social status."

Whilst noting the obvious relevance of this to their own proposed scenario Marlovians do not seek multiple parallels between Marlowe's known or predicted life and these stories, believing that the plays are so rich in plot devices that such parallels can be found with numerous individuals. On the other hand there are some places where they point out how difficult it is to know just why something was included if it were not some sort of in-joke for those who were privy to something unknown to most of us.

For example, when in The Merry Wives of Windsor (3.1) Evans is singing Marlowe's famous song "Come live with me..." to keep his spirits up, why does he mix it up with words based upon Psalm 137 "By the rivers of Babylon...", perhaps the best known song of exile ever written?

And in As You Like It (3.3), Touchstone's words "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room", apparently referring to Marlowe's death, are puzzled over by many of Shakespeare's biographers. As Agnes Latham puts it, "nobody explains why Shakespeare should think that Marlowe's death by violence was material for a stage jester."

External evidence

The main case against the 'faked death' theory is that, whilst there is evidence for Marlowe's death, there is no equally unequivocal counter-evidence that he survived, or did anything more than exert a considerable influence on Shakespeare. So far the only external evidence offered has been in the form of claiming that someone who was alive after 1593 must have been Marlowe, or finding concealed messages on Shakespeare's grave, etc.

Identity after 1593

Various people have been suggested as having really been the Christopher Marlowe who was supposed to have died in 1593. Some examples are a Hugh Sanford, who was based with the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton House in Wiltshire, a Christopher Marlowe (alias John Matthews, or vice versa) who surfaced in Valladolid in 1602, and a Monsieur Le Doux, a spy for Essex, but working as a "French tutor" in Rutland in 1595. There was also apparently an Englishman who died in Padua in 1627, and said by the family he lived with to be Marlowe (even if this was not necessarily the name by which he was generally known), but no search has as yet come up with any confirmation of this, and if Don Foster's hypothesis is correct that the "begetter" of the Sonnets may have meant the poet himself, then Marlovians would assert that "Mr. W.H." was not a misprint, as Foster suggests, but merely showed that the identity being used by Marlowe in 1609 (including the name "Will"?) most probably had those initials too.

Hidden messages

Unlike some supporters of the Baconian theory, Marlovians in general do not spend much time searching the works for hidden messages in the form of acrostics or other transposition ciphers. Peter Bull does claim to have found just such a message deeply concealed in the Sonnets, but few Marlovians have been convinced by this.

Furthermore, at least two Marlovians—William Honey and Roberta Ballantine—have taken the famous four-line "curse" on Shakespeare's grave to be an anagram. Unfortunately, the fact that they came up with different messages demonstrates the weakness of this approach. Anagrams as such are useful for conveying hidden messages, including claims of priority and authorship, having been used in this way, for example, by Galileo and Huygens, but—given the number of possible answers—are really of use only if there can be some confirmation from the originator that this was the one he meant.

Many anti-Stratfordians have spent their time in search of letter-based ciphers for the hidden messages which they are sure must be there. On the other hand, a favourite technique of the poet/dramatists of the time was irony, the double meaning or double entendre—i.e. playing with words.

To combat those who claim that Shakespeare was not the real author of the works, orthodox scholars cite the First Folio—such things as Jonson's saying that the engraved portrait "hath hit his face" well, that he called Shakespeare "sweet Swan of Avon", and that it refers to when "Time dissolves thy Stratford monument". Yet according to Marlovians it is possible to interpret each of these in a quite different way too. The "face", according to the Oxford English Dictionary (10.a) could mean an "outward show; assumed or factitious appearance; disguise, pretence". When he writes of "Swan of Avon" we may choose to take it as meaning the Avon that runs through Stratford, or we may think of Daniel's Delia, addressed to the mother of the First Folio's two dedicatees, in which he refers to the Wiltshire one where they all lived:

But Avon rich in fame, though poor in waters,
Shall have my song, where Delia hath her seat.

And when Digges writes "And Time dissolves thy Stratford monument", one Marlovian argument says that it is quite reasonable to assume that he is really saying that Time will eventually "solve, resolve or explain" it (O.E.D. 12), which becomes very relevant when we see that—whether the author intended it or not—it is possible to re-interpret the whole poem on Shakespeare's monument ("Stay Passenger...") as in fact inviting us to solve a puzzle revealing who is "in" the monument "with" Shakespeare. The apparent answer turns out to be "Christofer Marley"—as Marlowe is known to have spelt his own name—who, it says, with Shakespeare's death no longer has a "page" to dish up his wit.

The Hoffman Prize

Calvin Hoffman, author of The Murder of the Man who was Shakespeare (1955), died in 1987, still absolutely convinced that Marlowe was the true author of Shakespeare's works. Anxious that the theory should not die with him, he left a substantial sum of money with the King's School, Canterbury—where Marlowe went as a boy—for them to administer an annual essay competition on this subject. The Trust Deed stipulated that the winning essay should be the one:

...which in the opinion of the King's School most convincingly authoritatively and informatively examines and discusses in depth the life and works of Christopher Marlowe and the authorship of the plays and poems now commonly attributed to William Shakespeare with particular regard to the possibility that Christopher Marlowe wrote some or all of those poems and plays or made some inspirational creative or compositional contributions towards the authorship of them. (Emphasis added)

The adjudication of the prize has always been delegated to an eminent professional Shakespearean scholar and, despite Hoffman's clear intentions, the winning essay has very seldom espoused the Marlovian cause, the prize usually going to essays along entirely orthodox lines. The prize is of several thousand pounds (UK). A further stipulation of the initial Trust Deed was that:

If in any year the person adjudged to have won the Prize has in the opinion of The King's School furnished irrefutable and incontrovertible proof and evidence required to satisfy the world of Shakespearian scholarship that all the plays and poems now commonly attributed to William Shakespeare were in fact written by Christopher Marlowe then the amount of the Prize for that year shall be increased by assigning to the winner absolutely one half of the capital or corpus of the entire Trust Fund...

The amount in this case would run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The original hopes of Hoffman himself may have been largely ignored, but the benefit of this has undoubtedly been that far more research into Christopher Marlowe has resulted, and several books about him produced which would probably not have been written otherwise. The less helpful side of this is the proliferation of people eagerly trying to prove the theory right, rather than taking the rather more scientific approach of seeing if they can prove it wrong.

William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby

Main article: William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby

William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby was reported to be writing plays for the "common players".

One of the chief arguments in support of Derby's candidacy is a pair of 1599 letters by the Jesuit spy George Fenner in which it is reported that Derby is "busy penning plays for the common players." Professor Abel Lefranc (1918) claimed his 1578 visit to the Court of Navarre is reflected in Love's Labour's Lost. His older brother Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby formed a group of players which evolved into the King's Men, one of the companies most associated with Shakespeare.

It has been theorized that the first production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed at his wedding banquet. Born in 1561, Stanley's mother was Margaret Clifford, great granddaughter of Henry VII, whose family line made Stanley an heir to the throne. He married Elizabeth de Vere, daughter of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford and Anne Cecil.

Elizabeth's maternal grandfather was William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, the oft-acknowledged prototype of the character of Polonius in Hamlet. In 1599 he is was reported as financing one of London's two children's drama companies, the Paul's Boys and, his playing company, Derby's Men, known for playing at the "Boar's Head" which played multiple times at court in 1600 and 1601.Derby was also closely associated with William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and his brother Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery and later 4th Earl of Pembroke, the two dedicatees of the 1623 Shakespearean folio. Around 1628 to 1629, when Derby released his estates to his son James, who became the 7th Earl, the named trustees were Pembroke and Montgomery.

Asserting a similarity with the name "William Shakespeare", supporters of the Stanley candidacy note that Stanley's first name was William, his initials were W. S., and he was known to sign himself, "Will". Stanley is often mentioned as a leader or participant in the "group theory" of Shakespearean authorship.

Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke

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Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke

Several recent works by independent scholars have argued for Mary Sidney as the primary author of the Shakespeare plays. According to Robin P. Williams, author of Sweet Swan of Avon: Did a Woman Write Shakespeare?, Mary Sidney had the scholarship, ability, motive, means and opportunity to write the plays. Williams outlines the extensive connection between Sidney and original source materials used for most of the plays. Williams also argues that Sidney, as an aristocratic woman had more impelling motivation to write under a pen name than the male candidates. Fred Faulkes, in his book, The Tiger Heart Chronicles provides a comprehensive study of all the English literature at the time of Shakespeare and shows that Mary Sidney was at the center of the culture creating that literature. He concludes that she was in the best position to have written the plays.

A further argument in favor of Mary Sidney, put forth on the website of independent scholar Jonathan Star,[7] is based upon an analysis of Ben Jonson's eulogy to the Author, which appears in the prefatory material of the First Folio, published in 1623. Star shows that virtually every reference in the eulogy can be linked to Mary Sidney, while few, if any, of the references in the eulogy can be linked to William Shakspere of Stratford, or to The Earl of Oxford, or to any of the other candidates. Jonson's integral involvement in the editing and preparation of the First Folio, and his personal eulogy, suggest that he positively knew the author's true identity. Star argues that the measure for any authorship candidate is, therefore, how closely that candidate can be linked to Jonson's eulogy.

Group theory

In the 1960s, the most popular general theory was that Shakespeare's plays and poems were the work of a group rather than one individual. A group consisting of De Vere, Bacon, William Stanley, Mary Sidney, and others, has been put forward, for example. This theory has been often noted, most recently by renowned actor Derek Jacobi, who told the British press "I subscribe to the group theory. I don't think anybody could do it on their own. I think the leading light was probably de Vere, as I agree that an author writes about his own experiences, his own life and personalities."

Other candidates

At least fifty other candidates have also been proposed, including Queen Elizabeth, William Nugent, a less well known candidate first put forward in the 1970's by the distinguished Meath historian Elizabeth Hickey, Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke(1554–1628), proposed in 2007 by A. W. L. Saunders, and Henry Neville, a contemporary Elizabethan English diplomat and distant relative of Shakespeare, proposed in 2005 by Brenda James and William Rubinstein, professor of history at Aberystwyth University. Other candidates include the poet Emilia Lanier (1569–1645), Sir Edward Dyer; and Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland (sometimes with his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Philip Sidney).

Notes

• a. ^{^} On age 29, H. N. Gibson writes, "Although it is not properly my business, I feel that in the interests of fairness I ought to point out that most of the sins of omission and commission I have just laid to the charge of the theorists can also be found among the orthodox Stratfordians when they write a panegyric of their hero. They even have a group - the Bardolators - who are almost as wild and woolly as the Bacon Cryptologists." On page 30, Gibson continues, "Most of the great Shakespearean scholars are to be found in the Stratfordian camp; but too much must not be made of this fact, for many of them display comparatively little interest in the controversy with which we are dealing. Their chief concerns are textual criticism, interpretation, and the internal problems of the plays, and they accept the orthodox view mainly because it is orthodox. The Stratfordians can, however, legitimately claim that almost all the great Elizabethan scholars who have interested themselves in the controversy have been on their side.
• b. ^{^} However, Chandler writes:'while Oxfordians have sometimes attacked the academy for ignoring them, the fact is, on the whole, that "mainstream" Shakespeare scholarship has shown more interest in Oxfordianism than Oxfordians have shown in "mainstream" Shakespearean scholarship. SeeDavid Chandler, 'Historicizing Difference: Anti-Stratfordians and the Academy,’ in Elizabethan Review.

• c. ^{^} In the New York Times(30 August 2005), Niederkorn writes, "The traditional theory that Shakespeare was Shakespeare has the passive to active acceptance of the vast majority of English professors and scholars, but it also has had its skeptics, including major authors, independent scholars, lawyers, Supreme Court justices, academics and even prominent Shakespearean actors. Those who see a likelihood that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems attributed to him have grown from a handful to a thriving community with its own publications, organizations, lively online discussion groups and annual conferences."

Footnotes

Works referenced

• Bacon, Delia: The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded (1857); The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded
• Bacon, Francis: Advancement of Learning (1640)
• Bacon, Francis, The Major Works (Oxford University Press: 2002)
• Bland, Desmond: Gesta Grayorum (Liverpool University Press, 1968)
• Boswell, James: The Life of Samuel Johnson 1740-1795
• Caldecott, Harry Stratford: Our English Homer; or, the Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy (Johannesburg Times, 1895)
• Chambers, Edmund Kerchever: The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 1 (Clarendon Press: 1945)
• Dean, Leonard: Sir Francis Bacon's theory of civil history writing, in Vickers, Brian, (ed.): Essential Articles for the Study of Sir Francis Bacon (Sidwick & Jackson: 1972)
• Dobson, Michael, and Wells, Stanley, The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (Oxford University Press: 2005)
• Fletcher, Reginald (ed.): The Gray's Inn Pension Book 1569-1669, Vol. 1 (1901)
• Friedman, William and Friedman, Elizabeth: The Shakespearian ciphers examined (Cambridge University Press, 1957)
• Garnett, Richard, and Edmund Gosse. English Literature: An Illustrated Record. Vol. II. London: Heinemann, 1904.
• Heminge, John; Condell, Henry: First Folio (1623)
• Holinshed, Raphael, The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587)
• Jonson, Ben: Timber: or, Discoveries; Made Upon Men and Matter (Cassell: 1889)
• Hall, Joseph: Virgidemarium (1597-1598)
• Jardine, Lisa, and Stewart, Alan: Hostage to Fortune, The Troubled Life of Sir Francis Bacon (Hill and Wang: 1999)
• Kermode, F. (ed.), The Tempest, Arden Shakespeare (London, Methuen: 1958)
• Lambeth Palace MS 650.28
• Lambeth Palace MS 976, folio 4
• Marston, John: The Metamorphosis of Pygmalion's Image And Certaine Satyres (1598)
• Michell, John: Who Wrote Shakespeare (Thames and Hudson: 2000)
• Morgan, Appleton: The Shakespearean Myth: William Shakespeare and Circumstantial Evidence (R. Clarke, 1888)
• New York Herald. 19 September 1879.
• Pott, Constance: Francis Bacon and His Secret Society (London, Sampson, Low and Marston: 1891); Sirbacon.org, Constance Pott
• Pott, Henry; Pott, Constance Mary Fearon: Did Francis Bacon Write "Shakespeare"? (R. Banks & Son, 1893)
• Public Record Office, Exchequer, Pipe Office, Declared Accounts, E. 351/542, f.107v
• Purchas, Samuel, Hakluytus posthumus; or, Purchas his pilgrimes (William Stansby, London: 1625)
• Shelly, Percy Bysse: Defense of Poetry (1821)
• Smith, William Henry: Bacon and Shakespeare: An Inquiry Touching Players, Playhouses, and Play-writers in the Days of Elizabeth (John Russell Smith, 1857)
• Smith, William Henry, letter to Egerton, Francis: Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays? (William Skeffington, 1856)
• Spedding, James: "Of the Interpretation of Nature" in Life and Letters of Francis Bacon, 1872
• Spedding, James: The Works of Francis Bacon (1872)
• Vaughan, V.M., and Vaughan A.T., The Tempest, Arden Shakespeare (Thomson Learning: 1999)
• Various: A Mirror for Magistrates (1559)
• Wigston, W.F.C.: Bacon, Shakespeare and the Rosicrucians (1890)
• Wigston, W.F.C.: Hermes Stella or Notes and Jottings Upon the Bacon Cipher (London: G. Redway, 1890)
• Wright, Louis B., A Voyage to Virginia 1609 (University Press of Virginia: 1904)
• Wright, Louis B., The Cultural Life of the American Colonies (Courier Dover Publications: 2002)

'Marlovian' publications - in chronological order

• Wilbur Gleason Zeigler, It was Marlowe: a story of the secret of three centuries (1895). (Fiction, but with a foreword seriously proposing the idea)
• Archie Webster, Was Marlowe the Man?, The National Review (1923) Vol.82, pp. 81-86.
• Calvin Hoffman, The Murder of the Man who was Shakespeare (Julian Messner, 1955).
• David Rhys Williams, Shakespeare, Thy Name is Marlowe (1966).
• Lewis J.M. Grant, Christopher Marlowe, the ghost writer of all the plays, poems and Sonnets of Shakespeare, from 1593 to 1613 (1967).
• Honey, William. The Shakespeare Epitaph Deciphered (1969).
• Honey, William. The Life, Loves and Achievements of Christopher Marlowe, alias Shakespeare (1982).
• Louis Ule, Christopher Marlowe (1564-1609): A Biography (1992).
• Wraight, A.D. The Story that the Sonnets Tell (1994).
• Wraight, A.D. Shakespeare: New Evidence (1996).
• Zenner, Peter. The Shakespeare Invention (1999).
• Alex Jack, Hamlet, by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare - 2 vols. (2005) (related website)
• Rodney Bolt, History Play (novel) (2005)
• Samuel Blumenfeld's The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection: A New Study of the Authorship Question (McFarland 2008 ISBN 978-0-7864-3902-7) (related website)
• Daryl Pinksen, Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare (IUniverse, 2008 ISBN 0-595-47514-0) (related website)

Other theories about Marlowe's death - since 1992

• Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: the Murder of Christopher Marlowe (1992) pp. 327-9.
• Curtis C. Breight, Surveillance, Militarism and Drama in the Elizabethan Era (1996) p. 114.
• Paul E.J. Hammer, 'A Reckoning Reframed: the "Murder" of Christopher Marlowe Revisited', in English Literary Renaissance (1996) pp. 225-242
• J.A. Downie, 'Marlowe, facts and fictions', in Constructing Christopher Marlowe, eds. J.A. Downie and J.T. Parnell (2000) pp. 26-27
• M.J. Trow, Who Killed Kit Marlowe? A contract to murder in Elizabethan England (2001) p. 250.
• Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning: the Murder of Christopher Marlowe (2nd edition, 2002) pp. 415-7.
• Constance Brown Kuriyama, Christopher Marlowe, A Renaissance Life (2002) p. 136.
• Alan Haynes, The Elizabethan Secret Services (1952), (2004) pp. 121-2.
• David Riggs, The World of Christopher Marlowe (2004) p. 334.
• Park Honan, Christopher Marlowe, Poet & Spy (2005) p. 354.

Marlovian links

• 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.")
• The Marlowe Society. (Although not officially endorsing the theory, they do not reject it either, and have several items related to it on their website.)
• Michael Rubbo's Much Ado About Something.
• Peter Farey's Marlowe Page.
• The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection (a Marlovian blog/website, started in May 2008, with regular contributions from the world's leading Marlovians.)
• Peter Bull's Shakespeare's Sonnets written by Kit Marlowe.
• David More's The Marlovian newsletter. (No longer being published, although back issues are still available).
• Roberta Ballantine's A Christopher Marlowe Notebook.
• Bastian Conrad's German Marlowe-Shakespeare Page
• Daryl Pinksen's Marlowe's Ghost

Stratfordian links

• Terry Ross and David Kathman's Shakespeare Authorship Page. gives an informative overview of the Shakespeare authorship question from the orthodox point of view.
• A good summary of the Stratfordian argument can also be found on the alt.history newsgroup at [8]