SHAXSPER

Cecil House,

Mid-morning,

August 5th, 1598

 

Sitting in his father’s chair, Robert Cecil looks up. There’s been a knock at the door to the study. Almost instintively, he replies, “Come.”

 

Edward de Vere, dressed in mourning-black, enters the room in which so many difficult meetings had taken place during the course of his life. The Earl of Oxford bows towards the small, crippled man even though Robert Cecil is more than a dozen years his junior and also his social inferior. But, today, those differences were inconsequential because today Robert Cecil is the most powerful man in England.

 

“Robbie, I was deeply saddened to hear of your father’s death. He was a great, great man who served Her Majesty with loyalty for half a century. That’s longer than either one of us has lived. I was told that he first entered Bess’ service during the reign of her brother, King Edward. Her old retinue of servants – Robin Dudley, my uncle Sussex, Sir Francis, Christopher Hatton and now Lord Burghley, her greatest support and guide – are all gone. I know that she is distraught with this latest loss. She feels her loneliness keenly.”

 

“Yes. Her Majesty came by personally to proffer her condolences soon after she heard of my father’s passing. She was visibly shaken but, as always, dignified and caring. I have always seen that special quality in her. Have you ?”

 

“I’ve seen that – and much more, besides. From the days of my youth, in this very room in fact, I was guided and instructed by your father. When my own pater died, I was not much more than a child – just twelve years old. So, when Bess arranged for my care and instruction – as was her right and duty towards an orphaned nobleman – I was assigned to be your father’s ward.”

 

“I remember your presence here when I was not much more than a baby. But I was never able to play like other children and then you were mostly away from here – at Cambridge or Gray’s Inn – already embarked on your studies. We were so far apart – in age and in physical prowess – you were like some sort of other being. I so desperately wanted to be like you but God has had other plans for me. My dear father always told me that it must be so. He encouraged me to be studious, disciplined, careful, and I learned to serve Her Majesty by being at his side.

 

He always told me that God’s plan for me was to continue in his work, keeping England safe from papists and foreign domination. When other young men were learning to fence, ride, or hunt, I was in attendance of my father and the gaggle of old men he surrounded himself with. I was always kept close by, watching and learning the arts of statecraft. It was a long exercise in self-denial but I was always told that that would stand me in good stead when I reached adulthood. But who would have thought it would take so long for me to inherit and become a proper household-head in my own right ?”

 

“You have inherited your father’s sense of duty and loyalty as well as his appetite for hard work. Her Majesty recognizes that. Robert, you are now the most powerful man in England. That’s rather more than being just “a proper householder in your own right”.”

 

“I know that, Edward. But the road to power has been paved with many bitter denials. It pains me to say this – especially at this time of loss – but I often prayed to change places with men like you. I envied your freedom and your independence.”

 

“I suppose so but do you now envy my limping gait and pennilessness ?”

 

“I suppose not – there’s a price to be paid for everything, isn’t there ?”

 

“Too true. That’s too true, Robbie.”

 

“Edward, I want to ask you a question. Do you mind changing the subject ?”

 

“Whatever brings you comfort at this time, is good by me.”

 

“It seems a silly trifle but I’ve wondered for years how you got that nickname, “Willy”.”

 

A nervous laughter breaks the funereal gloom.

 

“You know, I’m no longer sure myself. When I was a mad, bad lad – when your father had arranged for me to marry me with Anne and I bridled at being traded like a commodity and your sister was being treated so execrably – I was in the company of a great many wild and crazy fellows. One in particular, Edmund Spenser, always kept calling me by different names. Not just “Willy” but also “WillMonox” and “Pasquil Cavilero” and “Labeo”. He also was the one who first called me “Willy Shake-speare” after that pedant Gabriel Harvey had referred to me as one whose “countenance shakes speares”. It was all meant in jest and the kind of mirth that poets shared.   But “Willy” just became me, in that company.”

 

“How I envied that. I was just a mere stripling and you were not just the apple of Her Majesty’s eye but also the living embodiment of a courtier – so strong, so athletic, so learned, and so much the cynosure for all who were outside the charmed circle.”

 

“You envied me ? I find that astonishing. Did you not see that I was just beastly towards your sister ? Were you not influenced because your mother detested me ? Did you ignore the evidence that your father didn’t trust me ? How could it have been that you could see the good in me when all around you were decrying my failings ?”

 

“Willy – may I call you so ? – that’s just the point. You were everything I was not. You were a true-born nobleman. You seemed to glide effortlessly above the cares and troubles of the day. You did as you wished, not as you were commanded to do. For a boy like me – crippled, tied to his desk, hunched over his books, and subservient in all things – you were what I was not. You were what I wanted so desperately to be. And you didn’t give a fiddler’s fuck about anyone else, or what they thought about you. To me, your life – and your way of living – seemed as close to the romance of the chapter books and tales of chivalry as would be imaginable.”

 

“Robbie, I’m astonished by what you’re telling me. I have to ask you when your attitude towards me changed.”

 

“Honestly, it never has. I’ve always been uncomfortable in your presence but I’ve had a long, hard unsentimental education so I’ve had to learn to keep my emotions under control in all situations. Still, whenever it was possible for me to see you or to support your activities I have eagerly grasped that opportunity. It has always grieved me that you were so completely unaware of my true feelings.”

 

“Now, I’m flummoxed by what you’ve just told me. Yet it is true, I largely ignored you because you were so much younger than me and always seemed to be dwarfed in your father’s presence. I only ever encountered you when he was there, you know.”

 

“That will now be different. I am now – finally – going to be my own man. Let me change the subject again because speaking of being my own man leads me to inquire after your young son, Henry. I’ve never even seen the lad but I get reports that he’s a strapping youngster.”

 

“He is, indeed. He seems to have my own father’s athletic ability but none of my bookishness. His tutors already despair about him. He can’t sit still and he certainly can’t pay attention to his books or their instructions. I’ve already decided that Henry is not going to have the same kind of childhood as me – for one thing, of course, I couldn’t begin to pay for those expenses but, more significantly, he’s going to be apprenticed to my cousins, Horatio and Francis, who are career-soldiers. My bastard son, Edward, is already apprenticed with them in The Netherlands. It has been the great disappointment of my life that a military career was denied to me.”

 

“What do you mean by that ? Who denied it to you ?”

 

“It was mostly the product of circumstances and missed opportunities. I was sick during the 1569 campaign against the northern rebels or I might have otherwise accompanied my uncle Sussex although I got the impression that Her Majesty was not keen to see me do well in the field. I did go north but only when the mopping-up operations were taking place. Your father, too, was wary because, I think, he was worried that a senior nobleman with military aspirations might become a figure around whom discontent and opposition could gravitate. I think that that was why he always encouraged me in my bookishness and tolerated my wild behaviour.

 

It seems a long way off now, but at that time the memories of the Wars of the Roses were still fresh and, after the turmoil of the decade after King Henry’s death, new civil wars did not seem far off. There’s no doubt that the northern earls were harried and cornered and their retinues were slaughtered in order to diminish that possiblity. A few years later, my cousin, Norfolk, was also sacrificed on the altar of national unity. And, then, I was traduced to become an agent in the espionage games against others.”

 

“What are you talking about ?”

 

“Robbie, you’re too young to have known the inner workings of your father’s Machiavellian plots to ensnare the remaining Catholic lords but he used me in that capacity. I was an agent provocateur, set among my fellows.”

 

“Why did you do that ?”

 

“Do you have time for this now ?”

 

“Indeed, I do. The wailing and tears of mourning are not for me. I can remember my father without that monkey business. And, besides, I am now the man who oversees the trade in information.”

 

“I see. Let’s go back twenty-five years, to the early 1570s, when I had just been married off to your sister but engaged in some heavy dalliance with Bess.”

 

“You mean…”

 

“I thought you knew about that. Do you know about Henry ?”

 

“Now I’m confused. What “Henry” are you now talking about ?”

 

“My first son, Henry, was born to Bess in 1573 but she wouldn’t recognize him in any official capacity. Her reputation would have been seriously jeopardized if her name was sullied in that fashion. Henry was shipped off to be raised by the Wriothesleys.”

 

“I never knew that !”

 

“Only a select few did. Your father, of course. Later he told Anne who was distraught but she was also a good girl and an obedient daugher. Your father made it clear to her her that our marriage was just a dynastic arrangement. But she was young, foolish, and romantic – Anne actually thought I was Prince Charming. Learning about my affair with Bess and our changeling-child was a rude shock to her. But your father made it clear to her that if she was to become the mother of my child then she would have to leave behind her mother’s – your mother’s – influence. She would have to submit herself to me and get pregnant with an heir. She did so out of duty. The marriage was a bit of a sham but when she got herself with child I was able to claim that I had done my duty, too.

 

At that time, I wanted to travel. I was desperate to get out of England, away from the suffocating life at Court, and leave behind the ever-present reminders that I was being denied my military aspirations. And, if truth be told, I wanted to get away from Bess, too. I was deeply hurt by her rejection of our love-child. I was young and I couldn’t properly appreciate the statecraft behind her decision. I’m still appalled at her willingness to sacrifice a part of herself for what she calls the higher calling of her role.”

 

“Let me see if I understand you. You’re telling me that you were bedding Her Majesty even while you had just been married to my sister. And when Her Majesty bore your child you were separated from him.”

 

“That’s right. I had to get away from these entanglements and I desperately wanted to visit Italy and study there. It was perfectly obvious to me that my way forward in England would be thwarted at every turn. I could never be a military commander and – don’t forget – Bess would always toy with me as a counter-weight to Robin Dudley or Christopher Hatton or whoever else she played with.

 

The situation was claustrophobic – the walls pressed in on me. Ironically, the triumphal act of bedding and impregnating the Queen sowed the seeds of my imprisonment. In that circumstance, the only option open to me was to get out of that situation. Italy’s lure was made all-the-stronger by the problems of remaining at court, a kind of potent eunuch. That’s right – I was both “potent” and a “eunuch”. It was an intolerable situation for a vigorous young man like me.”

 

“I would imagine that it was awful for Anne, too.”

 

“Yes and no ! She was just a girl, what could she expect to become – a wife ? a mother ? – but never a powerful person in her own right. She was always going to be a pawn in your father’s games. She might not have known that when she was married off to me – she was too young to know about that – but our marriage was a success, it got your father his peerage. Anne had begun to serve his purpose. When she delivered a male child, a son-and-heir to the Oxford title, she would have completed the job. But as you know, that was not to be. Our baby boy died soon after his birth.

 

Now, my little boy Henry is in line to become the Eighteenth Earl. The girls look like they will do well for themselves. You’ve been a terrific, warm, supportive guardian for them. Elizabeth is a bit of a handful but even if her marriage to William Stanley has not been a happy match, at least it has given her a title and position as the Countess of Derby. For that, we are grateful. Bridget’s hardly more than a girl and I suppose that it won’t be long before she’s putting herself on the marriage market.”

 

“My goodness, they don’t tell you a thing, do they ?”

 

“What do you mean by that ?”

 

“Actually, Bridgie’s already been betrothed twice. I thought you knew that. However, both engagement were broken off quickly. Now it seems that there’s another candidate but these matters are going to be delicate since my father’s death must be followed by a long period of mourning. She and that young Norris boy are just going to have to wait. But they are both very young and both are very headstrong, too, but I think we can exert sufficient control over them to delay the marriage for another year, or maybe even longer.”

 

“I should hope so. I’d like to see Bridgie wait to marry until she’s attained her sixteenth birthday but that won’t be for almost two more years. Robbie, if there’s anything I can do to assist you with the guardianship of my daughters then you need only ask. I’ve been an absent parent but in the circumstances it was hard to see how those three girls could have been raised otherwise.

 

When Anne died – it’s ten years ago, now, isn’t it ? – I was in no state to look after them. After I married Elizabeth Trentham, I spoke with your father about bringing them into our new home but he was resolute that the girls would benefit from continuity in familiar circumstances. They visit us frequently at King’s Place in Hackney, you know, but that’s no substitute for supervision and daily caring for their needs.

 

It’s odd how things work out. My marriage into your family has been something of a real mixed blessing for us both. Anne was sacrificed but she was always going to be a bit of a martyr. In contrast, the girls have grown up to be wonderful young women who are strong, self-assured, and proud of themselves. They are so unlike their mother who was always under your mother’s sway.”

 

“I don’t like dwelling on this. It’s all quite painful to remember. Our mother was a very, very difficult, domineering woman, as you very well know. She made our childhoods into a kind of waking nightmare. Tommy, who was her step-son, rebelled but Anne and I were ground down by her. We were always under her thumb. Mother was always praying and prattling on about childish wickedness. Of course I loved her but I never enjoyed being with her. I clung to my father in order to escape her clutches.”

 

“I know exactly what you mean by that. She made everyone uncomfortable in her presence. That damned Calvinist obsession with “original sin” and the constant judgementalism made it difficult for me, too. But I was only her husband’s ward, not her child.”

 

Robert Cecil was visibly upset. He was squirming in his chair.

 

“Let’s change the subject, shall we ?”

 

“Certainly. I’ve not come here today to upset you.”

 

“I know that. Edward – Willy ? – tell me something else. How did you discover that pseudonym, “Shake-speare” ?”

 

“Again it’s a fairly long convoluted story but, to get to the essence of it, my mother’s mother’s family were Trussels from the West Midlands. I had some manors there – one in Billesley near Stratford-Upon-Avon, and another at Bilton on the edge of the Forest of Arden. I used to go there to get away from the court. About twenty years ago I met a distant, Trussel-kinsman named John Shaksper. His son, Will, was a wild boy who made a strong impression on me. I took him into my acting troupe even before I was granted that annuity by Bess herself.

 

Let’s see if I can tell you the rest of this story to you quickly.

 

One of the conditions of the annuity I received in 1586 was that I would write for the stage to promote patriotism. You remember that the tensions with Spain – on land in The Netherlands and on the high seas – were coming to a head. Actually, it was Walsingham who first put this idea forward to Her Majesty.

 

If I remember correctly, your father was rather sceptical but Bess was enthusiastic. My early plays had been whimsical courtly entertainments but what was now wanted from me was a new kind of action-play, like the ones that young Kit Marlowe had been writing.”

 

“Who ?”

 

“Kit – Christopher – Marlowe was a notorious bad boy whose plays were the rage ten years ago. I’m surprised you don’t remember him.”

 

“Was he the fellow whose murder was elaborately staged so as to mislead Lord Essex at the time of the Lopez affair ?”

 

“That’s right, he was trying to play both sides but Kit was too valuable an asset to simply kill him off. I’m surprised that you don’t remember the meeting I had with you and your father in this very room.”

 

“There have been many meetings in this room. Marlowe was small beer in the grand scheme of things.”

 

“I would suppose so but he was big news in the theatrical world. He changed the way in which stage-plays were written. He provided me with the model that got me started in a new direction. I already had a troupe of players and thus had an outlet for my writing. It was at that time that Will Shaksper was hired on as a dog’s-body, man-jack kind of fellow. He was a natural who quickly became a kind of manager. So, he was a visible “face” and that became important when the plays began to attract attention.

 

When people wanted to know who wrote the plays, Will was not bashful in hinting that he was the author. In the taverns of that time, Will was always looking out for new ways to make a penny. So, he would often let the gullible believe that he was the playwright, if he could cadge a drink or turn a trick. Matters came to a head a few years after the Armada when his claims began to be queried. Then it became necessary to let it be known that it was someone called “William Shake-speare” was the real author. It was all, as you know, something of a lame joke. But it worked. And, Will Shaksper carried on pretending to be The Bard.

 

Actually, my authorship was an open secret in the court circles but this little subterfuge stilled the public’s questioning by deflecting attention away from me. Will played along because we made it worth his while to do so. He then began to spend more time in Stratford-Upon-Avon because, soon enough, he had amassed sufficient wealth to repair his family’s fortune.

 

Originally I paid his father a few pounds each year to cover his boy’s expenses but after several years, when he had proved himself to be a valuable member of my company, we had to raise the amount. And then, again, when the issue of the pseudonym arose, we had to pay him more for his complicity. Now we pay him quarterly for his silence – he’s my “dumb man”. That’s how we talk about him amongst ourselves.”

 

“This is all very interesting to me. However, before I ask you some more questions, I think that we had better go downstairs to make an official appearance.

 

Can you come back here to talk with me in about an hour’s time ? There’s some food downstairs that the servants have laid on for any visitors so you can get something to eat in the meanwhile.”

 

“I’d like to do that. I think that the girls are downstairs and, if they are, then I spend some time with them.”
St John’s College,

Friday afternoon

 

“Chaps, please. We need to get down to the business of this afternoon’s session. Our excitement about the new initiative we discussed this morning will have to wait until tomorrow. But, perhaps The Timmer has something to add before we re-engage with our programmed agenda.”

 

“Thank you, Professor Sir Peter. As I mentioned this morning, Professor Luhan Marshall of Media Studies is an old friend of mine and I was absent at lunch – for which I hope you will excuse me – because I was able to meet with him, on short notice, at Corpus Christi.

 

I mentioned our activities – and put in a good word for Graham Phillips’ suggestion. He is very keen. Indeed, he has agreed to take part in our morning session tomorrow. For him, of course, this initiative represents a kind of “case-study” in media outreach. But, be that as it may be, he is not only excited to join with us but he also mentioned that there might be some available funds he can tap into. Of course, this would be excellent, excellent, excellent.

 

But the money will actually be less important than the prospect of involvement by a cohort of graduate students who can supply energy and expertise. So, I think we can all join together and give a heart-felt thanks to Graham Phillips for stepping out of the shadows, as it were, and making what might be a huge contribution to our research agenda.”

 

Graham Phillips nods in acknowledgement,

 

“Thank you, Professors.

 

I think that I must tell you that your thanks should also be directed to my colleagues Jamey Moran and Peter Moss. While you have been doing your professional activities, the three of us have been chatting together because we’ve been very excited about what we have learned from you.

 

As I mentioned earlier today, we are usually given the task of recording conferences on sexual propagation of one-celled organisms or other scientific topics that are considerably less accessible to us.

 

Your conference has struck a chord with us because, like all people who have been educated in the standard English curriculum at school, we have had our own encounters with William Shakespeare, whoever he might have been !”

 

Sir Peter Schofield takes over the floor, as usual. He wants to get things back on track.

 

“Let me join Professor Brooksby and the other seminar members in acknowledging our gratitude to your contributions. They are greatly appreciated by all of us.

 

Now, we have to turn our attention to the matter-at-hand. “Oxford in the Shadows” is the title we have given to this afternoon’s session. Our first speaker will be Dr Christine Evans of the University of Cardiff.”

 

A youngish woman of medium stature, Chrissie Evans is a regular member of the Oxfordian seminars. She had been an undergraduate student with Harry T. Roper in Toronto but had moved to England when she embarked on her doctoral research at Manchester, supervised by Sefton Lewis. When she completed her doctorate, she took a job at Cardiff and had now been there for twelve years.

 

“Thank you, Professor Sir Peter. My paper on “war echoes” begins with a consideration of the role of Fortinbras in Hamlet. He is, I argue, an especially odd character since he only appears in person at the end of the play yet his absent presence is central. It is because of his army’s manoeuvres that Horatio and Francisco are stationed on the battlements of Elsinore. It is Fortinbras’ actions – resolute, determined, and driven by revenge – that serve as a reverse image of Hamlet’s indecision and multiple prevarications   Both men lost their fathers, but Fortinbras goes about gaining retribution while Hamlet famously wonders what to do.

 

It could be argued – and, in fact, I do make this point – that Hamlet’s indeterminate actions very much reflect the role that Edward de Vere played in the great military events of his own day. Like Hamlet, Lord Oxford hardly covered himself in martial glory. In fact, his military career was an utter and complete failure. Edward de Vere was a philosophical thinker, not a man of action. That said, my concern in my paper was not specifically concerned with these biographical issues of character but, rather, with contextualizing Fortinbras’ aggressive militarism in relation to the contemporaneous armed struggles that pitted Protestant England against Catholic Spain.

 

The 1580s ushered in a period of open warfare. It was the pre-eminent issue in English economic, political, and social life throughout the last two decades of Elizabeth’s reign. It would seem reasonable, therefore, that since Lord Oxford seems to have died in 1604, these wars intruded on his consciousness. During this period, de Vere himself had had two quite shambolic military adventures – first, in the Netherlands in the mid-1580s and then, a few years later, during the Armada in the summer of 1588. As if to make his own failings in the military theatre all the more obvious to himself, Edward de Vere’s cousins were, of course, known as “The Fighting Veres”. They played a crucial role in the Anglo-Dutch campaigns against the Spanish in The Netherlands. In addition, his brother-in-law, Pergrine Bertie led the ill-fated French expedition of the following year. Warfare thus provided a kind of back-beat to his life and times. Successful warriors were scattered throughout his family.

 

It is perhaps useful for me to digress for a moment to note that “The Fighting Veres” given-names were Horace and Francis which leads one to wonder if the characters in Hamlet, Horatio and Francisco, were named after them. Certainly, Horatio who was asked by the dying Prince of Denmark “To tell my story” bears an uncanny resemblance to Horatio Vere, Baron of Tilbury, who mentored Oxford’s son, Henry, during his actions in the Thirty Years’ War. Equally intriguing is the fact that Sir Francis Vere was made the guardian of Henry de Vere when the seventeenth Earl of Oxford made his death-bed arrangements in 1604.

 

The first documented mention of the story of “Hamlet” is, of course, the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus’ thirteenth-century version of the old Norse legend “Amleth”. This early text was printed the Historiae Danicae, which was published in 1514. Several decades later, in 1576, Francois Belleforest translated it into French. Like almost all the works in the Shakespeare canon, Hamlet was a re-working of an earlier text. Our first English archival document referring to this story occurs in 1589, when Thomas Nashe, writes “Yet English Seneca read by candlelight yields many good sentences….: and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets of tragical speeches.” (my emphasis)

 

It would then be another five years after this fleeting mention of the so-called “Ur-Hamlet” before Henslowe’s famous Diary mentions a performance in 1594. Two years later, Thomas Lodge – another of the denizens of Fisher’s Folly – alludes to it briefly in Wit’s Miserie. It was only in 1602, more than a dozen years after Nashe, “The First Quarto” [or “The Bad Quarto”] would be entered in the Stationers’ Register. Scholars seem to be in agreement that this was a rip-off from the earlier performance-notes. In 1604, the same publisher, Nicholas Ling, printed The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. By William Shakespeare. Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie. Most authorities seem to agree that the play had been constantly revised. Indeed, the final version in The First Folio bears many marks of further re-working. Hamlet is far-and-away the longest play by Shakespeare. It runs to more than 4,000 lines and a full production takes longer than four hours to perform. It is “almost as much againe” as most of the other plays.

 

If warfare is in the background in Hamlet, it is foregrounded in the “Henriad”, most especially the two plays about the Bolingbroke’s ursurpation of the throne from Richard II. Henry IV parts one and two and Henry V were probably among the first plays that Edward de Vere wrote after being granted the famous one thousand pound annuity in 1586. What is striking about these plays is not the military action so much as the author’s ambivalence about military matters. This point has been well-developed by Curtis Brieght and I am going to quote liberally from his argument before re-connecting my own argument with the opening remarks about Hamlet.

 

Even during the Armada campaign, common soldiers and sailors were less than enthusiastic about having been dragooned or pressed into service. The appalling conditions of the men in the ranks contrasted to the glorious prizes won by their noble and genteel commanders. It was a situation that alarmed some of the professional soldiers and sailors. Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, the admiral of the fleet, wrote to Walsingham “it were too pitiful to have men starve after such service…for we are to look to have more of these services; and if men should not be cared for better than to let them starve and die miserably, we should very hardly get men to serve.” And, he was right to be concerned – desertion was a constant problem.

 

Lord Howard’s concern was not shared by his masters in the Privy Council; William Cecil was the Lord Treasurer and his response to this demand for loosening the purse strings is most revealing: “To spend in tyme convenient is wisedom. To contynew charges wtout nedefull cause, bryngeth repentance. To hold on charges wtout knolledge of ye certenty thereof, and of means how to support them, is lack of wisdom.” To my ear, the Lord Burghley’s temporizing words sound a lot like Polonius’ tendentious advice to Laertes.

 

It is crucial to understand that the Armada campaign was financed in part by royal state funding but also in part by the early modern method of contingency funding – private individuals provided men, ships, and armaments in the expectation of receiving “prize money”, a share of the spoils. The fiscal reality was that the state did not have the funds to cover its expenses. Contingency funding in warfare was a continuation of the practice of the same arrangements that had been in place for privateering and piracy on the high seas throughout Elizabeth’s reign. Men like Hawkins, Raleigh, and Drake became incredibly rich. These freebooters – pirates to the Spanish – directed as many as one hundred privateering expeditions per year. The Armada was the Spanish response to this persistent campaign of state-sponsored piracy and naval profiteering. According to Breight: “The [English] elite invested in war to make money and dispose of the unemployed, and they needed henchmen to facilitate their investments, subcontractors of a sort allowed (sometimes encouraged) to profiteer at the vast expense of commoners.”

 

When the commoners tried to organize for back pay, they were met with the full fury of the law – trained bands of local men with extra-legal powers were entrusted with repressing popular resistance. The hangman was entrusted with disposing with those unlucky enough to get caught. The levels of state violence directed downwards was simply awesome: Richard Hakluyt, the contemporary recorder of Elizabethan expansion, wrote in 1582: “if we would behold with the eye of pity how all our prisons are pestered and filled with able men to serve their country, which for small robberies are daily hanged up in great numbers, some twenty at a clap out of one jail (as was seen at the last assizes at Rochester)….”

 

Historians confirm that the scale of state-sponsored violence in the Elizabethan period was truly terrifying. The poor were the main object of this violence and were routinely whipped and sometimes made to wear badges. Some even had their bodies branded. In the Edwardian period, there had been a law which created a form of legalized slavery for men or women found to be guilty of begging or sleeping rough on embankments, in barns, or under bridges. It’s horrific to realize that they were the lucky ones – it is estimated that in a national population of about four million, there were about 800 executions per year. That would be a ratio that would equate to 60,000 executions per year in a population of 300,000,000, which is about the same size as today’s United States of America.

 

Another feature of this state-sponsored regime of murderous violence was its extraordinary peak in the last years of the sixteenth century. As I just mentioned, there were about 800 executions ordered by the assizes in the last years of Elizabeth’s reign.   Two centuries later, when George III was on the throne and the population had more than doubled, there were 68 executions. Thus, despite the massive extension of the “bloody code” of capital crimes in the Georgian era, the annual execution-ratio had fallen from 1:5,000 to 1:75,000.

 

If we engage in some reasonable statistical manipulation of this data so as to only consider males, aged fifteen to fifty, who made up the bulk of the people who met their maker swinging from Albion’s Fatal Tree, then a man’s chance of execution in any one year was 1:1,250. One could continue this exercise in hypothetical cliometrics so as to narrow any one commoner’s likelihood of meeting the hangman by reducing the ratio further by taking into consideration class structure (because almost all hanged men were plebeians) and then further reducing the ratio by adjusting it from an annual to a life-time calculation. The impact of these hypothetical exercises in cliometrics would suggest that an individual, male adult commoner’s likelihood of execution was probably about 1:200. Civil life was, thus, to mis-quote Thomas Hobbes, nasty, brutish, and short for those commoners who had the misfortune to be caught up in the class-wars of the Elizabethan period.

 

Military life was even more hazardous. The command structure was profoundly corrupt as well as being largely incompetent. Desertion was rife. Payments for service were infrequent. Food and provisions were terrible. Arms were inadequate. Sickness claimed more victims than died fighting. A grim sense of these horrors has been suggested by Curtis Breight who claims that perhaps as many as “200,000 male commoners” were coerced into serving in the Elizabethan hot and cold wars, on land and upon the seas. How many died ? We do not know and, in fact, given the state of archival evidence from this pre-statistical age, no records were kept to provide reliable numbers of soldiers and sailors who died under the flag.

 

These approximations provide the dreadful context in which Sir John Falstaff appears in the “Henriad”. Men like Falstaff dragooned plebeians – so-called “masterless men” described by contemporaries as “rogues, loyterers, pikars, & drunkards” – into the army and pressed common-sailors into the navy. Fat and jolly he may have been to mystified readers in later centuries who were distanced from the horrors of Elizabethan state-violence but, for contemporaries, a man like Sir John Falstaff wielded the sharp point of the state’s prodding stick. This is evident from a clear-eyed reading of his lengthy speech in the First Part of Henry IV:

 

“If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a sous’d gurnet. I have misused the king’s press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good householders, yeomen’s sons; inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been ask’d twice on the banns; such a commodity of warm slaves as had as lief her the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild-duck. I press’d me none but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins’ heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies – slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the Glutton’s dogs licked his sores; and such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded unjust servingmen, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers trade-fall’n; the cankers of a calm world and a long peace; ten times more dishonourable ragged than an old-fac’d ancient. And such have I, to fill up the rooms of them as have bought out their services, that you would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered Prodigals lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and press’d the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I’ll not march through Coventry with them, that’s flat. Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on; for indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There’s not a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half shirt is two napkins tack’d together and thrown over the shoulders like a herald’s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stol’n from my host of Saint Albans, or red-nose innkeeper of Daventry. But that’s all one; they’ll find linen enough on every hedge.” (4.2. 11-46)

 

In my pre-circulated paper, I have carefully de-constructed Falstaff’s long-windedness to explicate the ways in which Oxford has continuously destabilized his role in providing human fodder by underlining his pomposity. I need not do that now but please note that Falstaff himself freely recognizes that his recruits, who are meant to be members of the respectable commons, are actually drawn from the most pitiful dregs of society.

 

If the implications of Oxford’s ambivalence towards the Elizabethan war machine are clearly evident from a close reading of the words he puts into Falstaff’s mouth, the very fact that these words are spoken by a pompous blowhard serves to deflect their impact thereby taking the sting out of them.”
Willy’s AfterLife

 

“Bess, did you know about these terrible goings-on ?”

 

“I only knew what I had to know. I was fed information on what William Cecil called a “need to know basis” so the details were never provided to me. And, to be truthful, I really wasn’t interested in details. I wanted my ministers to do that and then provide me with a range of options from which I could choose one.”

 

“I guess that leads us to ask a question: “If you had known the full details of the human cost of your warfare, would you have gone along with William Cecil and Francis Walsingham in their military adventurism ?”

 

“Will, that’s a hard one. It’s hard for me to even think about it at this distance.”

 

“Let me tell you it was much harder to live with it in my life time. Boys from my little village were snatched up. Will Akhurst and Rob Stoutley, John Whalley and Jacky Baker, as well as the two Smail lads were never seen again. But for years after their bodies were violently snatched away, their mothers and fathers keened for their return. Those old people – and others like them – died broken-hearted. It was a scene repeated in ten thousand villages across your realm.”

 

“Will, you knew these boys. On my estates, where I was spending my time away from court, the news of the press-gang and the dragoons created terror. Mothers kept their sons as well as their husbands at home or sent them away to hide in the forest. Daughters worked in the fields in their stead.

 

When someone was captured, his first response was to try to bribe the soldiers and, if that failed, the man often pointed his finger at neighbours who were in desperate straights. Often his father would pay the poor man’s son to take his place. Tensions in the village were always at a fever pitch when rumour had it that Her Majesty’s recruitment officers were on the prowl.”

 

“In my village, Willy, young Will Dunsmore was sold off by his parents in just that way. Like my family, the Dunsmores were losing their grasp. Bad harvests and too many mouths to feed had made them desperate. When the dragoons grabbed my cousin Arden’s boy, my uncle was able to get Will Dunsmore to serve in his place. My father told me that it cost Uncle Arden three marks to save young Tommy. Everyone knew that being in the army was a fate akin to death. Being landlubbers, serving in the navy was even worse. Going to sea was a sure and certain way to disappearance. The boys who were grabbed by the press-gang – Johnny Chapman, Gregory Huntley, James Brewster, George Rowlett, and the Taylors – simply vanished, as if into thin air. We never heard of them again.

 

Like the plague and famine, the recruiters were a terror in our everyday lives. It wasn’t so bad when I was a little lad but by my twenty-first birthday, when I was already married with one child and twin babies, these man-hunts were becoming frequent. In one sweep of Stratford, five boys and young men – some of whom were like me, married with children – were taken. Of them, only George Adshead returned a few years later from The Netherlands. George returned but he was a broken shell of the man who left. He came back with no left foot and a terrible fear of loud noises. Around that time I had entered Willy’s household – my father had inveigled a place for me – and so I was relatively safe, living in London under the protection of a great man. But even wearing Willy’s livery did not completely protect me. Do you remember that ?”

 

“I most certainly do. I had to go down to the dockland in Wapping and hand over two gold sovreigns to get you off that ship. They were due to sail with Drake in a few weeks’ time. A few years later, when that ship returned, hardly a man-jack amongst them came back to London.”
Cecil House,

Early afternoon,

August 5^th, 1598

 

Sitting in his late father’s chair in the book-lined study, Robert Cecil anxiously waits for Edward de Vere to return.

 

A knock on the door breaks the anxious silence.

 

“Come.”

 

Lord Oxford opens the door and steps into the small room where he takes his place on the low seat beside his brother-in-law.

 

“How were the girls ? I saw that you were talking with Susan and Bridgie.”

 

“That Bridgie is something of a terror – I fear she might take after me, or her older sister. She’s running off in all directions at once. And, little Susan seems to idolize her. When Bridgie was speaking to me about her engagement with the Norris boy – you know his family, he’s Lord Berkeley’s grandson and heir – Susan was enraptured. I fear that she will be another one who will be hard to control or direct.”

 

“Actually, Edward – Willy ! – I don’t think so. From what I can gather she and the young Herbert boy only have eyes for each other.”

 

“But Robbie, that seems preposterous. Susan’s not even eleven years old.”

 

“Some things, Willy, are just fated to be.”

 

“What ? I’m astonished to hear that from you.”

 

“But you really don’t know me. You only knew my father’s son. I’d like to think that I can be that – and more – and maybe even different.”

 

“Now you’re really surprising me. I never had any clue that such still waters ran so deep. Next thing you’ll be telling me is that you’re a playgoer and something of a libertine.”

 

They both laugh at the latter idea.

 

“Well, not a libertine but you’d be amazed at the number of ladies who find a crooked little man like me intriguing. Perhaps it’s the charisma of power. But whatever it is, I’m amazed at it. It’s as if I’m looking in the mirror at your Richard III. You know the moment when he exclaims,

 

“Was ever a woman.in this humour woo’d ?

Was ever woman in this humour won ?”

 

But, be that as it may be, I am a great admirer of your literary efforts. While my father was still alive – and more so when my mother was with us here – I had to keep my admiration a secret. I’ve read all your published poems and the privately-circulated sonnets have also been accessible to me. I went on many an occasion to the theatre.”

 

“You don’t say.”

 

“Indeed, I do say so. At first, when your plays were being performed by your own company, Lord Oxford’s Men, I went out of mere curiosity. But I soon learned that I could learn from them. I became a constant observer although I usually dressed in disguise, even sitting myself among the groundlings.”

 

“This is fascinating. When you said you learned from the plays what exactly did you mean ?”

 

“Sitting among the commoners was, to begin with, a way to learn how they reacted to what they saw upon the stage. That was most educational. It really gave the lie to the claims of Whitgift and his sort that they were traduced by the words spoken by the actors. Indeed, I was astonished to learn that they paid little heed to what was said. For them, the actors were merely extensions of the pantomimes and puppet-shows they had always frequented. It wouldn’t have made much difference to them if the actors had been mute. During the performance, there was so much eating and drinking, banter and jesting among the groundlings that they couldn’t have heard much even if they wanted to. Most of all, they wanted action and a clear line of demarcation between their heroes and the villains. They understood this by watching the actors’ body movements.”

 

“You mean to say that the fine speeches and witty repartee went for nought ?”

 

“Essentially, that’s the truth of the matter.”

 

“I’m stunned.”

 

“Why should this information surprise you ? Do you ever spend time among the commoners ?”

 

“Er, no. I have to admit that I don’t do that. I assumed that the men in my troupe would let me know if my speeches and the language I used were acceptable to the audience.”

 

“Now I’m the one who’s astonished. Don’t you realize that there’s a yawning gap between the culture of people like us and the rest of them ? They don’t read books or speak foreign languages. They’re superstitious and ignorant and never speculate about philosophy or theology. And their vision of politics is both conservative and filled with hatred of foreigners. They know what they love and love what they know – and as for the rest, “the devil will know his own”.

 

In the classical texts we read as boys with our tutors, and then later at Cambridge, the main characters were always high-born. Lower-class people were introduced merely to make light of them. It’s pretty much the same in what you write for the stage. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, but I am saying that your narrow view of them is actually in accordance with their own views of themselves. They believe in their marrow that they were put on God’s green earth for a purpose so they don’t question the order of things.   For people like us, this should be reassuring. For me it is, I can tell you that.”

 

“Robbie, I never imagined that I was going to learn so much from you. And, I am doubly surprised to learn it in these sad circumstances.”

 

“Willy, I am saddened by my father’s passing. Of course, I am. Truly, I am but my father was an old, old man and, in his last weeks he was in terrible pain. By the last fortnight, he was ready to go. He rallied a bit at the beginning of July but you could see that the will to fight on had gone. In the end, he just slipped away. That meant that I endured the sadness and experienced my loss while he was losing his grip on his life. Now, he’s gone. It’s over. I have to go on. I might have the body of a monkey but I have the constitution of an ox. Now is my time to be in charge.”

 

Willy is taken aback by this forceful declaration of independence.

 

“Robbie, you are suprising me with everything you say. What more is in store for me today ?”

 

“One more thing. I have a request to make about your History plays, especially the ones in which Sir John Falstaff is featured.”

 

“Really ?”

 

“I would like to ask you to try and re-write them so as to emphasize the malice in that man. He is seen as merely being a buffoon. But I think that if you could put some other words in his mouth then he might be a useful to me, and to the Queen’s policy.”

 

“I’m confused. What would Falstaff have to say that might be useful to you ?”

 

“Let me explain myself in a roundabout way.

 

You will remember that when my father (and the others on her council) went ahead and executed the death warrant against Mary of Scotland that Her Majesty was furious. Everyone misunderstood her anger. They believed that she was upset that a crowned monarch, like herself, had been subjected to the laws of men and their Parliament. But this was not what infuriated her.”

 

“I thought it was. She said so herself.”

 

“I know. But what she said was not what she meant. She hid her true reasons from others.”

 

“Well, what were those ‘true reasons’ ?”

 

“Quite simply, she was upset that she had lost the power to choose or to decide Mary’s fateful day or reckoning. But the deeper reason was that the execution of Mary made war with Spain an inevitable certainty. She had hoped against hope that the plans for the Armada would somehow be thwarted. “Scotched”, you might say ! But the final doing of the deed took the initiative out of her hands. By letting the Parliamentarians’ baying be paid with Mary’s blood, it allowed the commoners to sense that they were no longer kept at arm’s length from the royal business of making war.

 

The executioner’s axe gave the Parliament men the belief that they were welcomed to be involved in Her Majesty’s prerogative matters. She had always fought tooth-and-nail against that diminution of her powers and then, with one fatal blow, she had lost her advantage. That’s why she was consumed with rage. She was terrified that the open declaration of war against Spain was going to exhaust her Treasury and without money she would be continually forced to go cap-in-hand to beg for funds from Parliament.”

 

“I never saw that angle to her behaviour.”

 

“No one did. At the time, we all believed that what she said about the sanctity of a divinely-sanctioned monarch was the sum of her objections. Some even said that she was re-enacting her response to her mother’s execution but that always struck me as a far-fetched suggestion. She never knew her mother.

 

I sensed that this was a mis-reading of her motives but it was only a while later, during the dangerous days of July 1588 when the Spanish fleet was nearly upon us that I was able to discover her real motives. She was edgy, but we all were nervous. What was different in her manner in that desperate time was that she felt constrained, even cornered. That wasn’t just the result of the Spanish threat so much as the intrusion of commoners who felt that because they were contributing to the campaign they should have a say in what was happening. This just rubbed her the wrong way. Like I said earlier, she always liked to play all sides against one another because that gave her the freedom to be the final arbiter.

 

Now, to get to my point, I think we’re in a similar situation with the war-mongering clique led by Lord Essex. Robert Devereux wants to bring Parliament and popular opinion to bear against Her Majesty’s tendency to play the long game. Devereux wants to change the rules of engagement which have served Her Majesty so well for so long. She has been greatly agitated by his incessant calls for spending money she doesn’t have. She has been fearful that every call for money will lead to a counter-call against her prerogative powers. She is much more comfortable with the older system of joint-stock subsidies in which men invest in warfare for private profit instead of the new system in which the state and its treasury – her treasury ! – act as the paymasters-in-chief.”

 

“I see what you’re telling me. But I don’t understand how I can be of assistance to her policy.”

 

“Look at matters this way. If you can re-write those scenes then the character of Falstaff becomes crucial because he is the man who is working on the ground, among the common people. If Falstaff is rewritten to become a kind of mercenary monster – not just the butt of Prince Hal’s wit – then it is my belief that his actions on the stage will help to turn opinion against Essex’ wild-eyed schemes. If the plays highlight that the cost of Essex’ war cries will be to transfer the cost of military activity onto those poor sods who will be forced to bear its worst burdens then his campaign will lose its appeal.”

 

“I thought that you said that the commoners did not listen to what was said on stage, by the actors. How can I change that ?”

 

“Good question. I think that what you need to do is to show the audience that the rotten-ness of Falstaff’s inner thoughts is manifested in his outward behaviour. He can still remain the butt of Prince Hal’s humour but he needs to be shown to be evil incarnate. Remember, too, that his words will not be ignored by the better sort in the audience. People like us do listen to what is spoken. That’s the part of the audience that I want you to target with the revisions you make to these plays.”

 

“I think that I can do that.”

 

“Good. I know you can.”
St John’s College

Friday afternoon (continued)

 

“Thank you so very much Chrissie. That was just splendid.

 

Our next speaker will be Professor George Taylor from Birmingham. As we’ve been together for a few days now, I don’t believe that any kind of formal introduction is necessary.

 

George, if you please.”

 

A slim man with thinning hair, Taylor is the only person who was dressed in a business suit. He is wearing a blue-striped shirt, with a starched white collar and a St John’s College tie.

 

“Thank you, Professor Sir Peter. I feel like a bit of a spy in this gathering because, as some of you know, I am a rather late-comer to the Oxfordian camp. In fact, it was only a few years ago that I began to pay much attention to the so-called “authorship controversy”. Before that, I had been mostly concerned with lyric poetics among the sonneteers in King Henry VIII’s England. But, as you can imagine, when my interests moved into the Elizabethan period, it was impossible not to come to grips with the role of Edward de Vere, as both a patron and a leader of the noble, courtier poets.

 

But I am not here to give you a potted biography of myself, although I think it is probably germane to explain that I came to develop an interest in Lord Oxford’s plays set in Greco-Roman antiquity. My interest first led me to publish several articles on “war-weariness” or “disillusionment” in Troilus and Cressida. I am mentioning this to you only because my concerns in those papers, in turn, led to my essay prepared especially for our seminar which is, as you all know, concerned with Coriolanus. The background of constant warfare in the later 1590s provides the context in which I have framed Oxford’s wariness towards the war-mongering of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.

 

Famously, William Hazlitt wrote “Coriolanus complains of the fickleness of the people yet, the instant he cannot gratify his pride and obstinacy at their expense, he turns his arms against his country.” Could one better express the main pivot in Oxford’s depiction of Devereux’s precipitous downwards plunge to the executioner’s block ?

 

Coriolanus usually gets “dated” to the middle of the first decade of the seventeenth century, after Elizabeth had died and James of Scotland had succeeded her. But what is the explanation of this dating ? Like all attempts to provide a specific “date of production” for Shakespeare’s plays, this claim is quite simply baffling. The historical fact-of-the-matter is that we know absolutely nothing about the play until its appearance in The First Folio. Furthermore, Coriolanus was not staged before 1623 so any attempt to fix a “date of production” is really nothing more than speculation. But speculation – or conjecture – in order to be convincing should make an argument that is congruent with known historical facts and not simply be an act of imaginative surmise.

 

A.D. Nuttall, to refer to one of the most esteemed “Orthodox Stratfordian” critics, has attempted to substantiate this dating by arguing that “Shakespeare probably did think of corn riots in the Midlands when he wrote Coriolanus.” Note that Nuttall writes “probably” when attempting to explain the context of the famous scenes in Act I in which Menenius silences the Roman mob with the famous “fable of the belly” (I, i, 96-160). The starving proletarians’ desire to turn the world upside-down is fobbed off. Menenius tells the hungry mob that they do not create wealth, they merely consume the riches which others have appropriated. This is, of course, the conservative view of the Roman regime of bread-and-circuses. Note, too, that Nuttall is unable to substantiate his claim with anything more than his “probable” guesswork.

 

I will return to consider in some detail this scene of the “fable of the belly” shortly but, for the present, it is more useful for us to keep our eye on Nuttall’s “dating” which strikes me as being historically short-sighted, if not altogether blind. The essence of my skepticism regarding Nuttall’s claim is its lack of context – Coriolanus is a man driven to extremes by his paranoic delusions of “honour”, which lead him to betray his country, which seems to be a pitch-perfect description of Robert Devereux’s behaviour in the last years of the 1590s, especially his conduct of the Irish campaign.

 

But this is hardly enough on which to hang a revisionist dating. We can do better than Nuttall by drawing your attention to the wider historical context. The later 1590s was the very period when, as a result of the series of bad harvests from 1594/5 through 1597/8, the living standards of the poor – the “purchasing power” of their so-called “real wages” – reached a nadir in relation to the “basket of consumables” historians have constructed for the long time-series stretching between the thirteenth and twentieth centuries.

 

In the 1590s great numbers of “masterless”, poor men and women were driven onto the roads in search of food. Parish registers from all over England record that beggars were found dead in wealthy yeomen’s barns. In 1595 there were recurrent riots involving apprentices, journeymen, and casual workers in London. In 1596, in Oxfordshire, the Emslow Hill Rebellion, served to underscore the dangers posed to the established order by popular discontent, spawned by hunger, war-weariness, and the Elizabethan government’s preference for the stick – and not the carrot of the moral economy – in governing the food markets. As we know, Oxfordshire is located next to Warwickshire where some of Edward de Vere’s favourite, ancestral manors – Bilton and Billesley – were located.

 

I would thus submit that it hardly seems to be coincidental in relation to either time or place that these events – Devereux’s grasp for power and the popular insurgency – provide a relevant context in which to locate the historical background in which Lord Oxford conceived and wrote his play about the honour-mad and power-hungry Coriolanus.   By dating the play’s inspiration to the later 1590s we can set it into two contexts – the high politics of factionalism and the popular politics of famine and insurrection.

 

Now, let us return to Menenius’ “fable of the belly” and its seemingly effortless ability to turn an upside-down world right-side up in response to the First Citizen who complained:

 

“Care for us ? True, indeed ? They

Ne’er car’d for us yet. Suffer us to famish,

And their storehouses cramm’d with grain;

Make edits for usury, to support usurers;

Repeat daily any wholesome act established

Aginst the rich, and provide more piercing

Statutes daily to chain up and restrain the

Poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will;

And there’s all the love they bear us.” (I,I, 76-84)

 

The First Citizen’s complaints would ring resoundingly in the ears of a mid-1590s audience. The proles had thrown down the gauntlet of class struggle in the first scene of the first act of Coriolanus.

 

How does the spokesman for the status quo reply ? To begin with, Menenius tells the “First Citizen” that the belly would claim its operations are central to the general welfare of the body. Thus, the belly seems to be central to the maintenance of the body’s health. The body is, of course, the standard, Renaissance metaphor for the social system although it is more usual for the spokesmen for the ruling class to conceive of themsleves as its head rather than its belly. But, in this instance in which the question of food is paramount, it is quite understandable that the belly is given that prominent role:

 

“I receive the general food at first

Which you do live upon; and fit it is,

Because I am the storehouse and the shop

Of the whole body. But, if you do remember,

I send it through the rivers of your blood,

Even to the court, the heart, to th’ seat o’ th’ brain;

And, through the cranks and offices of man,

The strongest nerves and small inferior veins

From me receive that natural competency

Whereby they live.” (I, i, 129-138)

 

Next, however, Menenius turns the tables – in metaphorical terms – on the popular classes. He does this very cleverly by telling the First Citizen,

 

“The senators of Rome are this good belly,

And you the mutinous members; for, examine

Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly

Touching the weal o’ th’ common, you shall find

No public benefit which you receive

But it proceeds or comes from them to you.

And in no way from yourselves. What do you think,

You, the great toe of this assembly ?” (I, i, 146-153)

 

After this gratuitous insult – “You, the great toe of this assembly” – the “First Citizen” is rudely put in his place:

 

“…being one o’ th’ lowest, basest, poorest,

Of this most wise rebellion, thou goes foremost,

Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run,

Lead’st first to win some vantage,

But make you ready you still bats and clubs;

Rome and her rats are at the point of battle;

The one side must have bale.” (I, i, 155-161)

 

It is at this point that Caius Marcius – aka Coriolanus – enters; the insult offered to the mob is viciously raised. He addresses them as “you dissentious rogues/ That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinions/ Make yourselves scabs….” When Coriolanus is next apprised that the mob has gathered to demand food, his first response is “Hang ‘em!” (I, i, 189), which he repeats a few moments later (I, i, 203). Then, finally, he tells Menenius that “The rabble should have first unroof’d the city/ Ere so prevail’s with me; it will in time/ Win upon power and throw forth greater themes/ For insurrection’s arguing.” (I, i, 216-219)

 

In the very first act of the play, therefore, we see that the Roman soldier/hero – the power-mad and honour-crazed Coriolanus – is no friend to the common people. In the succeeding scenes with his terrible mother, Volumnia, we learn about the roots of his paranoid delusions of grandeur. Coriolanus’ only concern is his rarified sense of his own dignity, not the plebeians’ more mundane concerns with getting and spending. Coriolanus is a man whose lust for personal satisfaction knows no bounds. He will turn the status quo inside-out to satisfy himself. In his ruthless attention to his own desires, he is a danger to all – both the plebs and their betters, the senators of Rome. This is an almost-perfect description of the actions of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.

We might note that this comparison was not lost on the Queen herself who was said to have exclaimed to her Council, on that momentous day, February, 8, 1601 – that when Essex gathered him men to gain control of her from her evil counselors, “I am Richard [II], Know ye not that ?” The conspirators had arranged for Oxford’s pre-Henriad play, Richard II, which turned on the deposition of an anointed monarch, to be performed which seemingly put it author, Edward de Vere, in hot water.

 

But Lord Oxford’s antipathy to Devereux/Essex was both well known and cunningly exploited by Robert Cecil who was the man in charge of day-to-day affairs in the realm, having succeeded his father in that role. Ten days later, Lord Oxford would be a member of the jury which sentenced Devereux/Essex to death. And, in the darkest day of his life, Edward de Vere also had to go along with his fellow peers and to agree with the death sentence – later commuted to life imprisonment in The Tower – for his own son, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton.

 

But, to return to Coriolanus and “the fable of the belly”, what of the pseudo-Marxist claims by the “First Citizen” that wealth is created by the “hands”, the proletariat and the commons ? Here, I think, Nuttall has hit the nail on its head with his acute insight that “though set in an early period of Roman history, [Coriolanus] shows us not a primitive agrarian economy but an economy distorted by military successes. The wealth is made not by honest ploughmen and reapers but by military campaigns that result in the exaction of tribute from the subjected peoples.” This is, I think, an apt description of the political economy of the militarized Elizabethan war machine – the Spanish, pillaged the New World’s treasures, yielded tribute, the English common people were used, abused, and then discarded while the gang in charge of the war machine became incredibly rich through their privateering expeditions.

 

Elizabeth herself, as an investor in these expeditions, was a prime beneficiary, as were the clique around William and Robert Cecil, Drake, Hawkins, and Raleigh as well as all those noblemen, gentlemen, and London merchant princes who “invested” in piracy. In this milieu of rampant rapaciousness, Devereux/Essex made himself into a liability because he allowed his pride – his crazed sense of honour and personal dignity – to get in the way of business-as-usual. Like Icarus, Robert Devereux flew too close to the sun and plunged to his death.

 

Re-dating the inspiration for Coriolanus raises a further question: why was it neither published nor put on stage in the author’s lifetime ? The answer is, I think, quite obvious – in this play Edward de Vere was playing with fire. To be sure, his portrayal of Coriolanus/Essex is devastatingly pointed but it is also a sword with another edge – de Vere’s accusations against Essex’s personal madness inevitably implicates the whole ruling class in the fable of the belly. They all benefitted from the tributes exacted from the Spanish in addition to their ruthless exploitation of English plebeians. This was just too much for popular consumption. So, I submit, the play was written for a select audience and, like so many of Oxford’s works, was tweaked and revised as new circumstances created new ways of re-imagining its context.”

 

With that, Taylor ends his presentation. There are the usual moments of silence as the audience takes in what they have just heard. It seems to them all that Taylor has created at least as many questions as he has just answered. As is the case, Professor Sir Peter abhors a vacuum and takes control of the situation.

 

“Oh my goodness ! George has given us a lot to mull over when we re-assemble after taking our customary, mid-session break. The college staff have set up chairs and tables for us in the Second Court-yard. Afternoon tea will be served to us there.”

 

Disbanding slowly, the group straggle behind Professor Sir Peter’s lead. He again has the sartorial appearance of the Pied Piper of St John’s. And, in fact, that is not a bad description of his apparel today. He is wearing a blue-and-white-striped linen blazer, a scarlet-red shirt opened at the neck with a yellow cravat, and bright white trousers. On his feet he wears pierced sandals with red/yellow argyle socks. A veritable pied piper, indeed.
Willy’s AfterLife

 

“I have to ask you, Willy, about what we just heard. Is that a fair discussion of your inspiration ?”

 

“Only in part. That fellow, George, had almost nothing to say about the way that I got at Bess in that play. As I recall, you were simply scandalized with that.’

 

“I surely do remember that. I was hopping mad. The way you treated the relations between Coriolanus and his mother, Volumnia, was too close for my comfort. And if that wasn’t enough to point fingers at real people, it was apparent to all who witnessed the private presentation that Coriolanus’ wife, Virgilia, was an image drawn from life of your first wife, Anne Cecil. Why did you do those things ?”

 

“I always wrote about what I knew and based characters on people I had encountered in LifeOnEarth. As you know, one of the reasons why my plays had to be hidden behind a pseudonym was because they were studded with specific, personal references and in-jokes. That was all well-and-good if the play was not distributed to a wider audience but it was not always possible to keep my works under wraps.”

 

“That’s what I remember when we first negotiated our arrangement. Henry Chettle had seemed to open up a can of worms with his reference to the “shake-scene” in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit. Almost immediately, we came to an arrangement whereby you paid me to be your public face, “the frontman” as I think those seminar-people would now call it.”

 

“You negotiated a hard bargain, as I recall. But it was one of those dealings which must have been a good compromise since neither of us was entirely happy with the result.”

 

“I always thought I could have squeezed you harder, Willy.”

 

“You might have thought that but, in truth, you would have been wasting your efforts since I really didn’t have much extra to pay out to you. Besides, you and your father owed me something for taking you in a few years earlier. Surely, you wouldn’t have ignored that kindness.”

 

“I seem to recall that in that time you were trying to beg, borrow, or steal some extra funds from my discretionary funds.”

 

“Bess, I was always trying to do that !”

 

“Wouldn’t William Cecil help you out ?”

 

“Henry, be serious ! As you very well know, he was rapacious in his monetary dealings. Didn’t he force you to pay him five thousand pounds when you wouldn’t knuckle under to his demand that you marry my oldest girl, my Elizabeth ? I was also squeezed dry by that old man. As long as he kept control of Bess’ purse – and continued to have a whip hand over me as a result of the never-ending wardship saga – I was left with only a fraction of my possible income. For years my spending was excessive only because so much of my income had been diverted into fines and fees and other exactions. I was forced to borrow heavily but then, when my credit was no longer rated, I had to sell off my capital assets. When they were gone, I only had the annuity and the funds I could cadge from my wives. And, they knew all about my ways with money and rarely let me loose. I often tried it on with Robert Cecil who was more open with me because he was more receptive to using me as his tool, his voice.”

 

“You mean, he encouraged you in writing about open secrets for the public ?”

 

“Yes and no. Very few of my plays ever saw the light of day during my LifeOnEarth. Like that seminar-man, Taylor, just mentioned only about one-half were made public before Susan made arrangements for the whole lot of them to be published in 1623.”

 

“Are you talking about The First Folio” ?”

 

“That’s right. My youngest daughter, Susan, was already betrothed to Sir Philip Herbert before I died. Susan was my daughter with whom I was closest in my last years. She had been hardly more than a baby when Anne Cecil died. A few years before Anne’s death, they were all taken in by my in-laws against my wishes although I was in no position to resist or else William Cecil would have found some reason to deny me that annuity. After Anne died in the time of the Armada, the girls were raised by old William even though he had recently been widowed, was incredibly busy in his duties, and remote from them. He tried to control everyone and everything.

 

I always got on much better with Robert Cecil who was much more willing to lend me an ear even if he was just as tight-fisted as his father had been. No – let me re-state that. Robbie was more open to me because he believed that I could be useful to him. William barely tolerated me and always bristled at my relationship with Anne. But, Robbie saw things differently. In fact, he astounded me one day by telling me that he followed my stage career very closely. We often discussed my playwriting and he was not unwilling to suggest ways in which I could make the references more topical, pointed, and relevant to his interests.

 

In those immediate post-Armada years I never saw enough of my girls but – oddly – that changed after I married Elizabeth Trentham and we moved out of town. Then, when my boy, Henry, was born in 1593, they became regular visitors to our homes in Stratford (the village outside London, not the place in Warwickshire where Will was born), Stoke Newington, and later at King’s Place in Hackney, which is where I spent most of my last decade. The girls had a big-sisterly relationship with Henry but none whatsoever with my other son, Edward, by Elizabeth Vavasour. In fact, I saw little of him in his childhood years when I was feuding with the Knyvets but that changed when Edward Vere reached his youth. We had a rapprochement of sorts as I arranged for him to become a trainee-soldier under the tutelage of my cousins, Francis and Horace. But, I digress, as usual.

 

Susan was still unmarried when I died and she had taken a keen interest in my earlier writings and stage career. I suppose that it’s only natural that a girl on the brink of young womanhood would want to know her father better. And the fact that Susan’s father was the pre-eminent poet and playwright in the country made that interest much stronger. She, too, was inclined that way. That’s why she and Philip Herbert were so attracted to one another.

 

His mother was, as you know, the sister of Philip Sidney. Mary Herbert was a literary powerhouse in her own right.   Some foolish people thought that Philip Sidney and I were always at daggers-drawn but that’s because they confuse a youthful spat with a life-long enmity. That was not the case although we did differ with regard to our literary philosophies – Philip was drawn to classical precedents whereas my circle of Euphuists were more interested in exploring the possibilities and nuances of our native English language

 

Those two kids – my daughter Susan and Philip Herbert – would often ride out to visit us at our home in Hackney. Quite literally, they would sit at my knees to discuss literature. My two older girls – Elizabeth and Bridgie – were cooler towards me and my passions. The story-line of King Lear played off that difference between the girls and their relationship with me. But if that story-line provided the skeleton of the play – and it had earlier precedents, I actually begun to write a play about an old, impotent king at about the time that I was selling off the last of my possession of Castle Hedingham. As was so often the case, events in my personal life gave me inspiration and, I’d like to think, insight.

 

An early version was performed a few years later by The Queen’s Men but, as with all my works, it was constantly being revised and changed. Indeed, those discussions with Susan and Philip Herbert at Hackney played a large part in the way that the story evolved. The first version, The True Chronicle History of King Leir, had somehow found its way to a publisher around the time that Will and I came to our arrangement. In those years, many of my stage-works were being pirated and copies drawn from the player’s notes were used by printers. Because I had to protect my hidden identity, there was no way to intervene and put a stop to these infringements. Indeed, Robbie Cecil – who was always keenly devious – argued against that course of action. He believed that these pirated works gave an air of public credibility and acceptance to our creation of an alternative identity for the front-man. He had a point there, didn’t he ?

 

In any event, Leir ends happily. The confused old man and his beloved, youngest daughter reconcile and he reclaims his throne from the two terrible sisters. The first draft, which never saw the light of day, was too much like the children’s fairy tale, “Cinderella”. In my discussions with Susan and young Philip Herbert at Hackney, I came to see that this kind of melodramatic treacle needed to be jettisoned. I rewrote it with a more tragic end which was required to draw out the energies that were being obscured. So, as I was revising the story that eventually got published as King Lear, I played up the horrific implications of the old man’s foolishness. I think I was also influenced by the success I had had with Titus Andronicus which tells a not dissimilar story with a surfeit of gore and violence.”

 

“So, that’s where you went. After the household at Fisher’s Folly disbanded, I went off on my own and we rarely met one another face-to-face except when you would show up at the theatre when the company was rehearsing one of those Henry plays.”

 

“That’s right, Will. After the death of my first wife, William Cecil kept me at arm’s length except when he wanted something from me for his own benefit. So, I became more reclusive because I was cut off from the patronage he could dole out. And, in truth, it was serendipitous because leaving the court was the best thing I could have done for my literary career. No more hanging about in the ante-chambers with riff-raff, flirting with the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, drinking too much, gambling, and then carousing and whoring on the town all through the night until the early hours of the morning.

 

Over those post-Armada years, I slowly changed – you might say that I evolved into a responsible, mature adult which was not how I would have been described when I was in my twenties and thirties.”

 

“I should say not. You were the leader of the pack among the younger generation of dissolute ne’er do wells.”

 

“That’s not entirely fair. As you know, Bess, I was mostly engaged in spying on the younger generation of Catholics who were loyal to their Church, which sometimes led them to treasonous activities. Once we exposed them, and especially after we caught them red-handed in their dealing with Mary of Scotland, I began to drift away from the court.

 

It was in those Armada years that I began my playwriting in earnest. William Cecil had always blocked my way forward in public life. I have to admit that my efforts at gaining military glory were, quite frankly, somewhere between ridiculous and absurd. But I had my writing to fall back on. It was at about that time that Kit Marlowe showed us a new way forward and I began to copy his example in my History plays. Slowly, I grew in confidence and works that had begun as party pieces for courtly entertainments were re-shaped and they, too, evolved.

 

That’s why the point made by George Taylor about the difficulty – or, maybe, the impossibility – of assigning a date of production to my works is so significant. I was always tinkering and tweaking, fiddling and fidgeting with my works. They just grew and expanded – rather like an oyster’s pearl which starts out as a speck of dirt and slowly evolves as it expands and enlarges itself by adding on more and more new layers.

 

I’ve always been attracted to that image of the oyster’s pearl because the coastal flats near my family home of Castle Hedingham in Essex were renowned for oystering. I’ve eaten those slithery, slimey creatures for as long as I can remember and, of course, on occasion, I’ve had a pearl stuck in my craw.”

 

“What you’re now telling us is that there was nothing original in your play’s stories.”

 

“Henry, you’ve hit the target there. With one or two exception, all of my plays were based on existing stories which I changed, modified, adapted, and developed into something different. Some of these earlier works were well known at the time but others were only discovered by my reading in French or Italian, Greek or Latin. One of my favourite sources was Plutarch’s Lives, which William Cecil bought for me when I was still his ward, not yet twenty-one. About ten years later Tommy North came out with an English translation but I always preferred the French translation of that wonderful source-book. The original for Coriolanus comes from Plutarch, you know.”

 

“But your final version was nothing like Plutarch’s story.”

 

“Of course not, Henry. Like I said, original stories like that were just starting points. You might say that they were spring-boards from which I jumped and in so doing embarked upon my own creations. And, you know, there was nothing unusual about that. Kit Marlowe did the same thing and so did Ben Jonson.”
Cecil House,

February 24, 1601

 

Sitting in the study, Robert Cecil lifts his head at the sound of a light knock on the door.

 

“Come.”

 

“Willy, I’ve been expecting to see you. This dreadful business is, as it were, going to come to a head tomorrow morning.”

 

“That’s a truly awful pun, Robbie.”

 

“I suppose so. But Essex must die and, to be perfectly honest, I’ll be dancing on his grave even if I pretend otherwise.”

 

“I suppose that you could say that when that jack-ass rose up, his head will go down.”

 

“That’s just too, too cruel. Willy, you’ve outdone yourself.”

 

“I think I can do better.”

 

“Well, you’ll get the chance tomorrow morning because Her Majesty has expressly asked me to have you attend her before the hour of his death.”

 

“I wonder why she’d made that request. I’ve hardly been around the court for years now.”

 

“I think that the two of you have some urgent, private matters to discuss.”

 

“About Henry’s life ?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“She’s already confided in me that she is in a quandary. Letting Henry free would raise suspicions that even now she wants to quash.”

 

“Can you tell me more ?”

 

“No. She’s sworn me to secrecy on the pain of death. But I can tell you that she will confide her plans in you tomorrow morning.”
February 15, 1601

Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Chamber

6:00 a.m.

 

Her Majesty is sitting at the table, eating her breakfast. She’s already fully dressed, in black from head to toe, and her face and throat are made up with her usual, thick coating of white-eggshell paste.

 

There’s a knock at the door, it opens and the guard announces, “Your Majesty, it’s Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Lord High Chamberlain of England.”

 

She reaches out with both hands and desperately clasps de Vere’s right hand, which has been proferred to her in his act of ritual submission. Turning to the ladies-in-waiting assembled to do her bidding, Elizabeth waves them away.

 

“Leave us alone now. I want to be alone with my cousin and great friend.

 

Willy, please raise yourself up and sit beside me here. How good of you to come at this ungodly hour. I’m in a state of extreme anxiety and we need to talk.”

 

”I should say so, Bess. I’ve been so frightened this last fortnight after our Henry threw in his lot with that arrogant fool. Are you going to let them go ahead with Essex’s execution ?”

 

“Of course. He gave me no other option and I have to be seen to be strong.”

 

“I understand that but what are you going to do about Henry ?”

 

“That’s why I summoned you here. I knew that you would be so frightened today that I must tell you what I am planning for him.”

 

“Should I be worried and frightened or grateful and appreciative ?”

 

“Willy, you can’t think me such a cold-hearted monster that I would order the beheading of our son !”

 

“I hope not but Henry’s participation in Essex’ insurrection was treasonous, regardless of what he thought he was doing. The law has been called upon to deliver a verdict on his actions not his intentions. I had to do my duty on that jury but I can tell you that this has weighed on me like a ship’s anchor.”

 

“I have given Henry’s fate long and hard thought. On the one hand, it would be unbearable for me to sanction his execution but, on the other hand, I can’t just set him free. That would arouse suspicions all over again.”

 

“What have you decided then ?”

 

“As always, a compromise. I’m old, sick, and won’t have long to live. My doctor tells me that I’ve got a cancer in my right breast but he has no idea of how long it will take to come to term. Maybe another year, two at the most. This is not something we can know.”

 

“I’m saddened to hear about your illness but what’s the relevance of your health to Henry’s condition ?”

 

“Just this. As long as I’m alive, he is going to be confined to The Tower.”

 

Lord Oxford gasps but remains in control of himself, squeezing more tightly on Her Majesty’s hand.

 

“I am going to give you a copy of the secret written instructions which I have communicated to Robert Cecil. He is now the man in charge. He knows my desires in this matter. When I die, James of Scotland will be announced as my successor. Robert Cecil will have already explained to him that it is my expressed condition of his succession that our son, Henry – known to others as Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton – is to be freed from The Tower. Henry is also to be reinstalled in his peerage and granted back all his estates. No explanation for these actions is to be provided. Robert Cecil will see to it that my wish is to be carried out.”

 

“Bess, this is an act of Solomonic wisdom. I didn’t doubt that you would spare Henry’s life but I had no idea that you would do so in such a clever – may I say, “Machiavellian” – manner.”

 

“I think that this arrangement will be the best way to preserve our secret. In the days after my death, the immediate outpouring of emotion will serve to distract attention from Henry’s release. Then, during the weeks following my funeral, all attention will be turned to James’ arrival in London and then his coronation.”

 

“It’s rather like a magician’s trick – distract them with the right hand so they neglect the movements of the left hand.”

 

“Quite so.”

 

“Will our son know about your decision ?”

 

“Absolutely not ! Henry acted the part of a traitor and he needs to spend a long, long time in confinement contemplating his wickedness. He’s been a rash, foolish, and headstrong young man and I think that his captivity will actually serve him well. He lacks self-discipline and needs to learn that following behind the foolish arrogance of Robert Devereux has been a terrible error.

 

But, there’s more. I have given Robert Cecil very precise instructions that you are not to communicate with Henry while he is incarcerated in The Tower. You are required to keep this secret close to your heart. You cannot divulge it to anyone else. If you break this bond with me then Henry will pay the forfeit.”

 

“Bess, this is a hard, hard bargain.”

 

“It’s the only way I can serve my destiny and protect our son. The alternatives are unacceptable – a pardon is out of the question. So, too, would be his execution. A light sentence might raise awkward questions again while some form of exile would be no better in stilling wagging tongues.”

 

“I can see the nature of your predicament. But I have to be blunt, how can you be sure that this period of detention will be short ?”

 

“I can’t be certain but the doctor is not optimistic for me. At my age, there are no guarantees, you know. I think that my solution to this conundrum serves all of us well – if not serving any one of us perfectly.”

 

“You are the one in charge. It’s your decision. I am here as your cousin, your one-time lover, and your all-time friend. I will serve you in any such way as you command.”

 

“Willy, I would hope that you will understand my decision in all its ramifications. Like so many other choices I’ve had to make in my life, this one is done with violence to my own personal, private feelings. If I had been able to do so, don’t you think that Henry would have been raised to be my son-and-heir ? But that was never going to be possible. I am going to go to my grave in torment over these terrible choices I have made.”

 

“I can sympathize with your emotional torment but I simply can’t emphathize with you.”

 

“Isn’t that a distinction without a difference ?”

 

“I don’t think so. I have never been in a position to make this kind of hard choice so I cannot properly comprehend your condition. That’s not to say that I don’t intellectually understand what you have had to do but, rather, it is to say that this has never been within the ambit of my experience so my understanding is inevitably going to be insufficient.”

 

“That’s exactly what I thought you would say but I was hoping for more. I was hoping that you would be appreciative of the subtlety of my decision and maybe even praise me for it.”

 

“Bess, I’m grateful that you have saved our son’s life but I cannot now – nor could I before – be appreciative of the reasons-of-state that denied me the pleasure of our love and parenthood.   Your rejection of Henry was also a rejection of my love. That cold, calculating rejection pierced my heart. That hurt has never left me. It has always been with me in the very core of my earthly soul.”

 

“Your reproach is warranted but if it can be of any consolation to you, your reproach shrivels into nothingness in comparison with my own self-loathing. You and I never should have become intimate but when we did, we lost all control over the consequences of our love. We’ve all been victims of our indiscretion.”

 

“ “Victims” ? That’s not the word I would choose to use to describe our ill-fated affair. It was, to me, a star-crossed indiscretion in which our destinies were forever caught up and from which we have never quite completely disentangled ourselves. But I never considered myself to be a “victim” because I loved you so passionately. I was madly, deliriously, and happily in love with love in the year before Henry’s birth. That was a choice I made – “victims” don’t make choices – but it wasn’t a wrong choice although it turned out badly because of circumstances beyond my control – and, I think, beyond your own control.

 

You never really had full control of your own self. Your own self was always divided. I would still like to believe that your private, personal self would have decided a different future for the three of us.”

 

“That point is well and truly taken. Elizabeth Tudor and Elizabeth the Queen were at war with each other within me. We – you, Henry, and me – lost that battle, didn’t we ?”

 

A knock at the door interrupted them.

 

“Damn. What now ? I can never just be Elizabeth Tudor, you see.”

 

Turning away from Edward de Vere, she respons,

 

“What do you want ? It had better be important !”

 

The yeoman of the guards comes inside the room and snaps himself to attention.

 

“Your Majesty, I am here to inform you that it’s now five minutes before 8:00.”

 

Looking out the window for the first time, they see that the rosey-red fingers of the dawn are streaking the eastern sky.

 

“You can go now and leave us alone again. Don’t disturb me again this morning.”

 

As the guardsman shuffles out the room, Queen Elizabeth sits herself beside her spinet virginal and sets her hands on the keyboard. As she starts to plays, the little hammers – the jacks, as they were then called – rise and fall to produce tonal sounds as they strike the wires.

 

“Is it time ?”

 

“I think so, Bess.

 

Outside, beyond the windows of the Queen’s privy chamber, there is an audible gasp. Cheering could be heard in the distance. These noises signal that Robert Devereux has just lost his head.

 

Queen Elizabeth continues to play on her keyboard.

 

Willy mutters to himself, “When Jacks start up, heads go down.”
St John’s College,

Friday afternoon

 

Leading his troupe out into the summer sunshine, Professor Sir Peter guides them into the Second Court. Here, away from the public, half a dozen, linen-clothed tables have been set on the grass. Servants are waiting to serve tea and biscuits. Everything is in order.

 

Joy Crayle, Ruby Hattenstone, and Neddy Shorts are joined by Sefton Lewis who is full of beans.

 

“This is proving to be a most exciting meeting. Excellent papers, lots of surprises and new avenues of inquiry, too. I’m enjoying myself immensely. How about you lot ?”

 

“I think it’s fair to say that we’re all excited to see what tomorrow brings. This idea of creating a new archive is thrilling.”

 

“Actually, Joy, I’ve found the papers to be predictable and a trifle disappointing.”

 

“Why do you say that Ruby ?”

 

“Well, for the reasons that the three of us have already discussed at some length. All this conjecture and speculation seems to me to be something of a dead end. What’s your view on this, Sefton ?”

 

“As you know, when I was commenting on Neddy’s paper I tried to make a similar point – absence of evidence is a troubling element in our arguments. If we can find a way to address this then I think that we can move forward. If not, then we’re going to remain stalled in a veritable Sagrasso Sea of marginality.”

 

“I have to admit that your comments pegged me back. But the drift of our conversations has led me to come around to Ruby’s critique. In a certain, very real sense, we are talking to one another. I think it’s fair to say that Oxfordianism has been ghettoized – it’s as if an academic quarantine has been enacted against us. We need to break out and reach a larger audience and the only way to do that is to radically change our tactics.”

 

“I’m in agreement with that, Neddy.”

 

“Ruby, I think you’ve convinced even the most sceptical among us of that.”

 

“I’m surprised to hear you say that, Sefton.”

 

“Why ?”

 

“Well, I’ve known you a long time and you’ve never expressed this kind of misgiving before.”

 

“That’s true, Ruby, but I’ve also had reservations about our project. We all have. Even such luminaries as Professor Sir Peter have remained open-minded on the subject. I think that any honest Oxfordian will acknowledge that our case is based on conjecture, surmise, balances of probabilities, but not hard evidence. When we take a long hard look at our arguments – no matter how skilful they are – there is a residue of uncertainty in them.

 

Oxfordians are, because of our position, open-minded and not true believers. I mean, we usually come to this minority view after dissatisfaction with the Orthodox Stratfordian case has become intolerable. None of us were trained to be Oxfordians. All of us are quite conscious of our outsider status, not to mention the scorn which often greets our opinions.”

 

“You’re right about that, Sefton.
Willy’s AfterLife

 

“I’m just horrified by what I’ve just heard. The two of you concocted a scheme which kept me in close confinement in The Tower for more than two years – from my surrender and trial in February, 1601, until a month after Bess’ DeathOnEarth in March, 1603. I’ve heard how you’ve tried to justify your actions but I have to tell you that I’m not convinced that you did it to keep me safe. It seems to me that your primary concern was to protect Bess, by protecting that ludicrous fiction about her supposed virginity. That reputation – that god-damned lie ! – made a mockery out of my LifeOnEarth.”

 

“Hold on there, Henry. You have to take responsibility for your actions, don’t you know that ?”

 

“Those are different issues – you abandoned me.”

 

“Not quite. Arrangements were made that installed you in a noble residence and you were coddled in every possible way as a child. Then, when you were orphaned, further arrangements were made with Lord Burghley for you to have the very best education. All the time, you wanted for nothing.

 

Besides, during your LifeOnEarth, your parentage was never known to you. So, the idea that it was a “mockery” is just so much more self-delusion. Don’t lose sight of the reality that you could have been beheaded – actually, you should have been beheaded for your treasonous actions. But you were saved and kept in comfortable confinement in TheTower for twenty-six months. Considering what happened to Robin Devereux and the others, you shouldn’t look back in anger. You should be grateful because, after I died, you went on to live a full life in the lap of luxury.”

 

“Henry, you also have to look at this matter in perspective. You got off very lightly – compared to Bess, for instance. Her mother was beheaded by her father on trumped-up charges ! Beside that, the little duplicity you had to endure was nothing. You weren’t even conscious of your status as a changeling. You have to grow up about this.

 

Living in the past – well, living during our time for our LifeOnEarth – was precarious. Even those at the top of the social ladder were never free from danger or jeopardy. It was not a stable time or place to be alive. How many men like you died in their beds at a good old age ? How many were cut down in their prime ? How many were deceived and mistreated shamefully ? How many were tortured ? How many were hanged, then drawn and quartered to die in excruciating agony ? Those of us – like you and me – who were able to somehow navigate our ways through those dangers really never realized how lucky we were. Now, looking back, seeing how later generations have lived in bodily security, we are able to gain perspective on those hazardous times.”

 

“Let me say something here. Henry, you were always coddled. You never went to bed hungry or cold or in fear for your family’s future. You took that safety and security for granted. Your parents – these two, Willy and Bess – provided that for you and you should be grateful that they took care for your well-being. It does you no credit whatsoever to whinge and mewl like a spoiled child.

 

I think I can understand that you are shocked to have learned about your own hidden history. During your LifeOnEarth you were kept in ignorance of it. So, it would be a shock for you to learn that your natural parents gave you up to another family and that your natural parents then later had you imprisoned. But, man, you were the one who was the traitor, in thought and deed. You were the one who had to take responsibility for that. You cannot excuse yourself from that nor does your claim that your ignorance “made a mockery” of your LifeOnEarth strike me as being anything more than weak, self-pity. Rather the opposite, I would think. By keeping you ignorant of your real lineage, Willy and Bess gave you the opportunity to have a life that was free from the awful constraints of kingship. For someone of your birth, you had an almost normal life.”

 

While this onslaught is directed against him, Henry was sullen and silent. But he doesn’t respond. He listens although it is apparent that he is bristling with umbrage. But this righteous indignation does not find a verbal outlet. He knows that what the others are saying to him is true. During his LifeOnEarth, he had been a foolish, foolish young man; and he was damned lucky to have escaped Robert Devereux’s fate on the executioner’s block.

 

Henry was an attractive person but he is by no means able to achieve what John Keats would later call “negative capability”. Henry – even in AfterLife – is unable to resolve his hurt feelings with the recognition that some things just can not be resolved. He could not accept that existential uncertainty is somehow unfair.   Now, he is deeply troubled that his ambiguous relationship with this uncertain condition is the product of willful actions by his biological parents. He thought of himself as the odd-man out even though he understands that this is not his destiny but Willy’s AfterLife.

 

The easy camaraderie that had characterized relations between the chosen companions in Willy’s AfterLife seems to congeal like an icy surface on a winter puddle.
St John’s College,

Friday afternoon (continued)

 

Re-assembling after a pleasant half-hour for tea, Professor Sir Peter calls the seminar to order.

 

Ted Salisbury, a chubby fellow, is now scheduled to comment on the papers by Chrissie Evans and George Taylor, on Hamlet and Coriolanus, respectively.

 

“I have to begin by saying that these two papers were exciting to read in the internet-version and, in relation to the events of this morning, even more interesting. The fact that an “Ur-Hamlet” seems to have existed and been circulating almost fifteen years before the first published copy of this work is, of course, a serious blow to the Orthodox Stratfordians’ edifice since Will Shaksper would have been just twenty-five years old at that time, with no evident knowledge of the Danish court. And, of course, Montaigne’s essays had not yet been translated from French. Chrissie draws our attention to the ‘war echoes” which provide the book-ends for the play. Her suggestion that these off-stage noises were an essential context for the on-stage actions seems to me to be entirely credible. Furthering this emphasis on the importance of the warfare of the 1590s, George’s reading of Coriolanus in relation to the Earl of Essex’s charismatic folly seems to me to be fully appropriate

 

However, I don’t want to dwell on these issues. Instead, I want to use these examples to lead us back to the enormous difficulty we have in accepting the Orthodox Stratfordian scheme for dating Shakespeare’s plays. To begin with, then, let’s review some of the more obvious problems.

 

First, of course, none of the plays can be accurately dated. For some of them we have a date of first-mention as with “Ur-Hamlet”. For others we have a note in the archival documents that a play of that name (or something close) had been staged and/or witnessed. But for fully one-half of the texts which were included in The First Folio there is nothing documented before their appearance in 1623.

 

The plays which first appear in The First Folio are: The Tempest, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, All’s Well that Ends Well, Twelfth Night, The Winter’s Tale, King John, The first part of Henry VI, Henry VIII, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Anthony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, and, Coriolanus. And, of course, we should add Pericles which first appears in The Third Folio, in 1664

 

What’s striking about this list is that it includes what could be called a random sample of The Bard’s plays – histories, tragedies, and comedies are all represented. Similarly, the list contains plays drawn from antiquity and Italy as well as others which seem to have a rather familiar setting in the Forest of Arden. The obverse of this is that the plays which were available in printed versions before 1623 were also a random sample – just a different sample. There seems to have been nothing predictable about the plays that were printed and those which only appeared in The First Folio. And, of course, one might also want to consider a number of other, Elizabethan works which have been attributed to Shakespeare but which have never gained “authorized” status.

 

Let’s leave aside this point, which takes us away from the main thrust, and acknowledge that The First Folio has an iconic status. But should its iconic status be the last word on the subject of The Bard’s output or was The First Folio particular selection made from a larger collection ?   My reason for raising this question is that it brings our quandary into sharp focus – we have The First Folio but we do not have draft-manuscripts of any of these plays, or others not included in this collection. I expect that this quandary is going to be addressed in tomorrow morning’s papers on “Posthumous Oxford” so I will leave my comment on this subject open-ended.

 

Second, some of Shakespeare’s works were frequently “pirated” in his lifetime. A list of unauthorized texts for which we have contemporary evidence would include The second and third parts of Henry VI, three versions of Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Merry Wives of Windsor, two versions of Hamlet, two versions of King Lear, Pericles, and Richard III. How did these texts reach a publisher ? Most scholars seem to believe that they were rough drafts copied by a member of the audience or else a cobbled-together version of players’ notes. Yet, as Diana Price suggests, “Shakspere’s apparently passive attitude toward unauthorized publication contradicts his otherwise aggressive attitude toward money.” The standard Oxfordian commentary on these unauthorized publications is that Edward de Vere was either unable or – more probably – unwilling to shed his carefully hidden identity to protect the copyright of his frontman. But the very fact that these pirated versions were circulating also provides evidence that the texts themselves were in a process of becoming that only ended with Oxford’s death in 1604.

 

Third, even if we can determine a date of a work’s first appearance, that is no reason to believe that that date corresponds to its date of composition. Suggesting a firm, fixed date of composition is most likely misleading because a number of the pre-1623 plays existed in several imprints, revised and changed. Hamlet being a case in point. So, I think it’s not unreasonable to claim that the plays were not fixed entities so much as evolving works which could, like George’s reading of Coriolanus, change in relation to new circumstances.

 

Fourth, we know that almost all of the plays were based on antecedent texts – again, Coriolanus reworks stories from Plutarch while some of the History Plays seem to have been very closely drawn from “Halle’s Chronicle”, as discussed by Alan Keen and Roger Lubbock in The Annotator.

 

Fifth, the records of courtly entertainments provide a list of possible first-drafts of later plays that found their way into The First Folio. This is the argument of Eva Turner Clark, which is richly documented but largely ignored by the Orthodox Stratfordians. Of course, Turner Clark’s argument is not just embarrassing but completely destructive to the Stratfordian case for authorship. Will Shaksper of Stratford-Upon-Avon was not yet thirteen years old when “The Historie of Error” was presented before the monarch at Hampton Court Palace on January 1, 1577. In the next month, she was entertained at Whitehall by “The Historye of Titus and Gisippus”. At Christmas, 1577, “at court” the entertainment was “A Pastorell or Historie of a Greeke Maide”. A week later, on January 6, 1578, Elizabeth and her retinue “at court” witnessed a production of “The Historie the Rape of the Second Helene”.

 

Unfortunately, we presently know nothing more about these production beyond their titles and the date they were presented to entertain Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth. Turner Clark believes that the first two of these plays were early versions of The Comedy of Errors and Titus Andronicus, the second two sound suspiciously like drafts which would later become the basis for Troilus and Cressida.

 

If these were the only courtly entertainments with “suspicious” titles then we might be wary but there were a great many others mentioned with names such as: “A History of the Duke of Millayn and the Marquis of Mantua” which gives one pause to think of Two Gentlemen of Verona; “The Jew” and “Portio and Demonrates” sound a lot like early versions of The Merchant of Venice. “Ptolome” might very well have been a stalking-horse for Anthony and Cleopatra.

 

However, my point here is not to praise Eva Turner Clark’s sleuthing but, rather, to recognize that not only do these courtly entertainments fit perfectly with the haphazard and casual comments praising Edward de Vere’s precocity as a playwright but they also fit perfectly with his post-1576 silence, which has been discussed earlier with respect to the chronology of his poetic lyrics. And, of course, Edward de Vere was in his late-twenties at this time whereas the teen-aged Will Shaksper was working at the glover’s bench in his father’s workshop.

 

It was precisely in the late 1570s that John Shaksper’s finances fell apart. Not only was John Shaksper in debt but because he was unable to repay loans or keep up with his taxes, he lost his position in town government. It was from this time that Will Shaksper’s father descended into a downward spiral from which he only recovered – miraculously – some two decades later. For Stratfordians, these were the very years when Will, the eldest son and second breadwinner in the Shaksper household, was supposedly assembling the cultural capital which enabled him to become the greatest writer in the English language.

 

And what cultural capital The Bard possessed ! Diana Price has assembled evidence from a variety of scholars (from both camps) which tells us that Shakespeare’s work contains clear references to forty-three classical authors, less than half of whose writings would be available in a sixteenth-century grammar school, and no fewer than 116 contemporary or recent writers. Some – but by no means all – of these works were available in English and/or Latin. Most of these 159 works were serious literature or philosophy which, one presumes, the Stratfordians’ Will Shaksper read while he was tentering skins or sewing gloves in his father’s workshop. The Bard not only read these works but he effortlessly incorporated them into his own writing. Those following Eva Turner Clark’s arguments in Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays would also make the point that references to contemporary – but untranslated – French, Italian, and Spanish authors were studded throughout the body of The Bard’s texts, whoever he might have been.

 

For Stratfordians, therefore, silence with regard to Eva Turner Clark’s research is the only possible recourse since acknowledgement of its implications would completely and utterly destroy their case. For Oxfordians, on the other hand, Turner Clark’s research is rather more important because it gives momentum to the belief that Edward de Vere was already – in the later 1570s, after his continental tour – dabbling in playwriting. What is even more germane to our argument is that Turner Clark’s research lends considerable weight to the suggestion that all of Oxford’s works were works-in-progress that were being constantly revised, modified, and reworked. But, frustratingly, we cannot claim more than that – the evidence is tantalizing but, alas, bears no more weight than a reasonable conjecture.

 

Yet when we find not one, not two, not three, not four, but a great many “reasonable conjectures” all pointing away from Will Shaksper and towards Edward de Vere then it seems logical for us to make the claim that the Stratfordian case is based on faith, not academic science. In fact, the only reasonable doubt in this matter is that the Oxfordian claims for de Vere’s authorship might be dis-proved IF new evidence were discovered. Equally, of course, Oxfordian claims might also be conclusively proven by the discovery of new evidence ! But, for the time being, the balance of probability is that the evidence we now have all points towards Edward de Vere’s claims for authorship of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry.”

 

Looking up from his notes, Ted pauses, gathers himself – and then continues.

 

“For this reason, the new initiative that was suggested about creating an updated search with an Oxfordian agenda is especially exciting. We believe that some time after de Vere’s death, his youngest daughter, Susan, came into possession of these materials because her husband and his brother were the eminences grises who bankrolled the production of The First Folio. Just consider what we might look for – new texts, drafts, letters, and other materials that have been left undiscovered because no one has been able to devote the energy, research time, and financial support to scour the archives of all the possible descendants of Edward de Vere.

 

The kinds of questions I have raised today could be answered if we could locate hitherto unearthed materials. In a very real sense, new documents could dis-prove the assertions of the Stratfordian doubters. I’m very keen to be in on the ground-floor of this project. I think that we have a chance to make a gigantic breakthrough in studies of the canonical Shakespeare’s works – and the Oxfordian claims to authorship.”

 

Ted’s presentation went well beyond his prescribed time-limit but Professor Sir Peter has not tried to stop him. Like an experienced sailor, he knows when to tack and when to sail downwind. And, if he had intervened it was likely that the audience would have asked Ted to continue.

 

When Ted finishes – despite the fact that there are still twenty minutes left in the afternoon session – Professor Sir Peter makes an executive decision and calls time on the proceedings.

 

“It’s a lovely, late summer afternoon and I don’t think that there’s much time for questions so let’s adjourn to informal discussions. Does anyone object.”

 

No one disapproves. The seminar splits up into smaller groups. Some head to the college bar for a drink. Some go to their rooms for a break from the intensity of the meetings. A couple go off to Heffer’s University Bookstore, just down the street from the front gate of St John’s College. Neddy Shorts, Joy Crayle, Harry T, and Ruby Hattenstone wander towards The Backs where they sit watching the punters make their way under the Bridge of Sighs. Everyone is caught between exhaustion and excited anticipation of the next morning’s session in which the new initiative is going to head the agenda after the two scheduled papers on “Posthumous Oxford”.
Willy’s AfterLife

 

The tension is still palpable. Henry is somewhat bewildered at his response to the secrets he has just learned. Willy, Bess, and Will are wary of broaching any subject for fear that Henry would lose control again.

 

“You know, I am in turmoil. I’m caught between incomprehensible anger and bewilderment. I really confused by my response. I mean, after all, that was then and this is now. So, why am I angry and perplexed at that anger at the same time ?”

 

“Henry, I think it’s like this. When we live through events, things happen fast and we don’t have time to make sense of what goes on. We can only make sense of LifeOnEarth by gaining a perspective on it. That’s what’s happening now.”

 

“Hey, just you wait a minute. Will, this is about me !   None of this is about Henry. This is my AfterLife; you three are here because I arranged for you to be here with me. Peete arranged that for me. None of this is about Henry’s confused feelings or Bess’ or even yours, Will. Maybe when you get to arrange your AfterLife with Peete, it can be about you. But here and now, it’s all about me.”

 

Now, the two aristocratics are in a state of high dudgeon. Bess and Will are just pissed off with their self-indulgence The whole experience has taken a very bad turn for the worse. What is going to smooth relations ?
March 24, 1603

 

Queen Elizabeth had died in the early hours, just after midnight. Now, all of Robert Cecil’s plans were coming to fruition.

 

Sir Robert Carey, the dead queen’s first cousin on her executed mother’s side, has been in attendance at Richmond Palace. When he hears the howls of grief from the ladies-in-waiting, he immediately rides to Cecil House to get his orders.   Only stopping long enough to get a sealed packet of confidential letters from Robert Cecil, he speeds northwards to inform King James VI of Scotland that he would shortly become King James I of England.

 

Changing horses at twenty-mile intervals along the Great North Road, by nightfall he has ridden to Doncaster in South Yorkshire, 155 miles. The next two days, Carey continues to ride hell-for-leather. In sixty hours from the time of his departure from London – in the early evening of the 26^th of March, 1603 – he arrives at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh yet would be several more weeks before James would enter London to take up his new title and all its appurtenances.

 

Elizabeth’s state funeral took place on April 28^th but it would only be in July – three months later – that James Stuart was crowned King James I of England, with all requisite ceremony. In these intervening weeks Robert Cecil consolidates his power by smoothing the transition for the new monarch.

 

The first step in this transition is the confirmation of the succession, which is duly ratified and publicly acknowledged by the Great Council in the afternoon, following Elizabeth’s death. But even before this official meeting took place, rubber-stamping Cecil’s plans, he has been visited by Edward de Vere, who had been informed of the new cirumstances by a messenger dispatched from The Strand to Hackney in the middle of the night.

 

At ten in the morning, Robert Cecil is alone in the study of his father’s town house. Robert Cecil is now The Man. When there is a knock at his door, he looks up and, like his father before him, simply responds, “Come.”

 

“Willy, how good of you to come into town so quickly. I trust that the journey wasn’t too difficult for you.”

 

“Robert, wild horses dragged me here. I’ve been waiting for two years, one month and some days for your summons. Please tell me when Henry will be released from his captivity.”

 

“Soon.”

 

“How long will that be ?”

 

“After such a long time, another week or two won’t make much difference now, will it ?”

 

“I suppose not but I am giddy with anticipation.”

 

“I understand but you are going to have to be patient and to keep a very low profile. Now is not the time to undermine the front-story that we have so carefully constructed. If we release Henry immediately then it will look odd and that might get some tongues wagging. But if we wait for another fortnight, give or take a few days, then Henry’s release will attract no attention from the chattering public who will all be caught up in a maelstrom of emotions, bouncing from sadness to elation and back again.”

 

“I can see your reasons for caution.”

 

“Thank you. I was thinking that we can connect Henry’s release to James’ arrival in London.”

 

“I see. Yes, I see. That makes perfect sense.”

 

“Of course, Willy, I will make sure that Henry knows about this by sending him a communication later today or maybe tomorrow.   He will have to be patient. I’d like to believe that his years of confinement have made him more reflective and better able to endure the trials and tribulations of fortune.”

 

“Robert, it would be especially good if he learned gratitude, as well.”

 

“That might be more difficult. I have no false hopes on that score. Noblemen like him – and you, too, for that matter – are not raised up or educated to be beholden to any other person, save the monarch. And, even then, in your dealing with the late Queen, you were not always gracious. I think it best, therefore, if we do nothing special to change his expected behaviour.”

 

“Yes, I can see that you’ve given this a lot of considered thought. That is a good suggestion. But, Robbie, I have to contradict you on one small matter – I don’t know how I can possibly repay you for steering this matter to such a successful conclusion. Two years ago, I was in despair and have been in a state of emotional turmoil ever since.

 

You have been through a lot together with me and I would be the first to admit that my behaviour has often been haughty, self-indulgent, and foolish. Self-control and self-denial just do not seem to be in my nature. I’ve been a bloody stupid bastard but now I am old, lame, and infirm so the most important thing in my life – really, the only thing that motivates me to carry on – is the hope that Henry will again be a free man. I would have willingly given up my life to save his. Now, you have done that for me. It’s a miracle to me that I will be alive to see the day of his release.”

 

“You will, indeed.”

 

“I’m quite overcome with emotions. I think I need to lie down. Can you please call a servant to look after me ? I’m no longer able to care for myself any more.”
St John’s College,

Friday, late afternoon.

 

 

Neddy Shorts, Joy Crayle, Harry T. Roper, and Ruby Hattenstone are sitting on the grass embankment behind the college, alongside the Cam. The Backs are swarming with people – tourists, office workers, and tired scholars in search of quiet relaxation. All are enjoying a wonderfully sunny, warm summer afternoon. The sun filters through the trees growing in the wild stretches of fenland on the Cam’s western bank   It is idyllic.

 

Soon, the foursome, who are sitting quietly, are interrupted by Juliette Lewes and Louise Davis.

 

“May we join you ?”

 

“Of course, although you might fall asleep in our company. After all, we are all nodding off. Each one of us seems to be alone with his or her thoughts.”

 

“Thank you, HarryT. We’re pretty much in the same state. The last two days have been intellectually hectic and somewhat unnerving.”

 

“Why do you say that, Juliette ?”

 

“I suppose that I was not expecting so much. There have been so many new ideas and claims to process. This has been unnerving because my brain has been whirring, almost out of control. I came here thinking about “footnotes” and right now I’m thinking about wholly new paradigms and interpretations. I guess that what has completely blown me out of the water, as you Americans say, is the sense of anticipating excitement tomorrow when we discuss this new archival project. It’s like being on the edge of a precipice and slowly looking down and realizing that the bottom is much, much deeper than imagined.”

 

“You mean to say it’s like that scene in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” when they jump off the ledge, into the river a few hundred feet below.”

 

“Exactly. Neddy, that’s exactly what I’m feeling right now – what Butch and Sundance felt when they ran over the edge.”

 

“Wait a second, here. I think that you’re really going overboard – if you’ll excuse the pun.”

 

“Why do you say that Ruby ?”

 

“I’m actually rather despondent about the new initiative.   What happens if, with all the best intentions and wonderful assistance, we find nothing new ? Will that doom the Oxfordian case ? Will we have made ourselves into the laughingstock of academia ?”

 

“I wouldn’t think so. As matters now stand, we’re hardly taken seriously by most “serious” Stratfordians.”

 

“That’s right. A few years ago I watched PBS show, “Frontline”, on which Jonathan Bate, who is a very highly regarded Stratfordian hard-liner was being interviewed. He had the incredible insensitivity to say “without being melodramatic about it, you deny the reality of Shakespeare one moment, you can deny the reality of the Holocaust the next.” Now, I don’t think that Bate was equating anti-Stratfordians with Holocaust-deniers, but as a person whose grandparents were killed by the Nazis at Treblinka, I took incredible offence at that remark.”

 

“God almighty, that’s just horrific, Juliette. Did you do anything about it ?”

 

“Damn right, I did. I wrote to the producers of “Frontline” to register my disgust with his suggestion, but I never received a reply.”

 

“That’s just too, too typical. Those Orthodox Stratfordians are just arrogant in their use of power.”

 

“Well, most of the ordinary anti-Oxfordians, so to speak, are rather less insensitive but still tactless, abusive, and obtuse. Often, they accuse us of snobbery because we try to substantiate the claim that only a man with a fantastic education could have read all the works referred to in the canon. In terms of the educational sociology of Elizabethan England such a man could only have been an aristocrat or gentleman because those without entry to the elite educational institutions a person could never gain access to those texts unless they were patronized by someone of great wealth and culture. It’s as if pointing out the implications of educational history is somehow a form of snobbery ! Similarly, we get accused of harbouring anti-democratic beliefs as if it’s not a bald fact that almost all of Shakespeare’s characters are of high birth while those of common origins are almost always the butt of jokes or portrayed as embodying animal-like characteristics. I’ve also been accused of having no integrity and/or being “insane”.

 

So, I don’t see how we could sink lower in their estimation but – and, of course, it’s a conditional – if we do succeed then that success will be all the sweeter to me.”

 

“I’m with HarryT on this. Let’s look at our situation in terms of a best case/worst case scenario.

 

The best case scenario would be that we can provide definitive archival evidence to substantiate so many of our conjectures, surmises, and claims based on a “balance of probabilities”. In so doing, we would most likely also unearth a load of other documents which would enrich the field of study in Elizabethan poetics beyond our wildest dreams.

 

The worst-case scenario would be complete failure to find anything new to contribute.

 

But would that be so bad ? It would confirm – once and for all time – that new documents are unlikely to surface. But I can’t see how proving a null hypothesis – that no new documents exist – can do much violence to the claims that have already been made on behalf of Oxford’s authorship. It’s not as if the failure to add more than one or two marginal snippets to the Shaksper biography has had any significant impact on the Stratfordians’ claims that the glover’s son from Stratford was The Bard. In the worst case, we would end up exactly where we were to begin with.”

 

“Neddy, would that be so bad ? I mean wouldn’t the exercise of archival searching still elicit a lot of new interest in the subject ?”

 

“I don’t think that that would be very significant, HarryT. I don’t think we could, as it were, do much recruitment on that basis. Most of the buzz around the project would dissipate rather quickly if we can’t come up with the goods.”

 

After listening quietly, Joy felt emboldened and began to speak,

 

“I like the idea of “discovery”. It makes me think that everything old can become new again. I think that what the new initiative will do is to reinvigorate our academic project. I’ve been coming to these meeting for a while now, and it’s almost always the same people. And like Ruby said at dinner last night, almost every paper is based on conjecture or surmise. What we need is a new way of seeing. We need new blood, new documentation, and new directions.

 

I think that there is going to be significant benefit in being connected with a project dedicated to renewal. I don’t want to minimize what that injection of energy will probably mean. I think it’s time for us – academic Oxfordians – to reach outside the walls of the academy.

 

As was pointed out this morning, the historical demographers found that there was a veritable fountain of energy that they could and did tap into. I think that we are ignoring – or overlooking – that at our peril. Plus, the changing age-structure of our populations here in Britain and also in the rest of the English-speaking world means that there is a huge reservoir of available talent.

 

Baby-boomers are now in their sixties and I can tell you from personal experience – not my own, of course, but that of my parents – a lot of them would be energized and excited by being included in our project. A lot of them just hate having “free time”. My parents and their friends are used to living busy professional lives. They don’t like playing bridge or golfing. Of course, most retirees probably couldn’t care less about getting involved but the potential outreach audience would be vast in terms of our research requirements.”

 

“You know, that’s a great point that I’d never considered before. It’s not as if we need tens of thousands of eager volunteers. A few hundred would be incredible. Even a hundred dedicated researchers would be fantastic.”

 

“Joy that’s got my batteries charged again. What time is it ? I need a drink. Anyone else care to join me in the senior common room – I think that Professor Sir Peter said we could charge any drinks to his account and that the seminar finances would cover us – as long as we weren’t too thirsty !”

 

“Wowser, free drinks. Count me in, Neddy. I could really do with a cold beer.”

 

“Anyone else ?”

 

“Yes”

 

“Yes”

 

“Yes”

 

“Me, too. Yes”

 

“That’s the six of us. Let’s get outta here.”

 

The six-some wanders back through the college courtyards and, like homing pigeons, soon find themselves at the stair-case leading to the senior common room.

 

[One hour later in front of the College gate.}

 

“Are you sure you told them to meet us at 7:15 ?”

 

“HarryT, cool your jets. That’s what I told them. And, if you can remember, I also told them to bring along anyone who might care to join us.”

 

“There’s a Spanish place just over St John’s Street and if we bring along a group they will make us a super-special paella. I was told that their sangria is also very good.”

 

“Look, here they come. Who is that with them ?”

 

“It’s Marley, the guy who gave the paper about the Trussel connections between Shaksper and de Vere.”

 

“Hiya, you all. I’m very happy to have been asked along. Actually, I think that there’s another person who is also going to join us. Chrissie Evans said she was looking to go out for dinner and I told her that this group would be here at 7:15.

 

There she is – in the Porter’s Lodge. I’ll go and get her.”

 

Once the eight-some has assembled on the cobblestones outside the Great Gate, a short discussion ensues and it is agreed that the Spanish place seems to be just the ticket. Turning left on St John’s Street, they walk to the restaurant which is on the other side of Bridge Street, close to the Round Church.

 

“Whose idea was this, Neddy ?”

 

“I had asked The Timmer for a recommendation – since the only place I knew about was the Indian tandoori restaurant we went to last night – and he told me that this was a good choice if we had a big group. This morning I asked the guy in the Porter’s Lodge to get us a table for six but we’ll have to see if he can accommodate two more. I doubt that there will be a problem.”

 

And, sure enough, there is no problem. The group is seated at two tables, placed end to end, in front of the window which look out over the street. They had hardly even sat down when a couple of large jugs of sangria appear before them. As was the case the night before, Neddy takes matters in hand.

 

“Anyone have food issues – seafood ? pork ? chicken ? anything ? I know that Harrycan’t eat cucumbers – it’s not a pretty sight when he accidentally swallows some.”

 

“Believe me, he’s not lying. I get an allergic reaction to them and my tongue swells up almost immediately. Otherwise, I’m fine with all that stuff; I don’t have any ethical dilemmas about eating dead animals, as my vegetarian daughter calls it.”

 

“If no one else has any food issues then I’m going to suggest that we get the waiter to arrange for us to have their super-paella, which they only make for groups of four or more. I suggest that we just leave it up to the chef to provide us with a good meal.”

 

Since no one demurred, Neddy gets up from the table and goes over to speak with the waiter. Their little conference lasts for about a minute.

 

“OK, we’re all set. He told me that it will take about forty-five minutes to make the paella from scratch. It will cost us each thirty pounds, four bottles of wine included. Does that seem OK ?”

 

Again, no one demurs so Neddy gives the waiter the thumb’s up.

 

Soon, the sangria is doing its magic. Everyone is talking at once. Little of the talk has to do with serious matters. Mostly it’s just gossip, trading information and other tid-bits of “shop talk”.. After about a half-hour, Juliette Lewes clinks her class and the chattering comes to a stop.

 

“I say, “chaps” -as we are all now used to be addressed as such – do you think that we can have a short conversation about the new initiative before the wine and food arrive ?”

 

No one wants to purse the matter so the chattering begins again. There would be time in the morning for more serious matters. For now, everyone just wanted to party.