July 2015 - The De Vere Society

Transcription

de Vere Society newsletter
July 2015
Dedicated to the proposition that the works of Shakespeare were written
by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford
The de Vere Society
Honorary President: Christopher Dams Esq.
“Report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied.”
Hamlet V ii
www.deveresociety.co.uk
Vol. 22. No. 3, July 2015
New Size for Newsletter
We hope that members will appreciate the smaller format as being easier to handle.
The content will, as ever, depend on contributions made by its members.
Autumn Meeting: DVS
The Autumn Meeting for the DVS will take place at the Thistle Hotel, Marble Arch,
London on 17 October 2015.
Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship
The SOF will hold its annual conference at Ashland, Oregon, USA on 24-27
September 2015.
The Shakespeare Authorship Trust
The SAT will hold its annual meeting at Shakespeare’s Globe, London on 22
November 1000 – 1700, on the theme of the History Plays
Newsletter
Contributors express their own views, not necessarily those of the Society or the
Committee. The next issue is planned for October 2015. Please send your comments,
letters, suggestions and articles (up to 2,000 words with image files sent separately) to
[email protected].
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July 2015
The de Vere Society

Welcomes everyone who appreciates the works of Shakespeare and is interested in
the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

Is dedicated as a Society to the proposition that the works of Shakespeare were
written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Individual Members often hold other
views.

Has demonstrated that the case for William Shakspere of Stratford as the author
of the Shakespeare canon is very weak: The Man who was Never Shakespeare
by A. J. Pointon and Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? by John Shahan and
Alexander Waugh (eds).

Has shown that the traditional chronology for the works of Shakespeare is based
on conjecture in Dating Shakespeare’s Plays (ed. Kevin Gilvary, 2010)

Has explored the role of Edward de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, not only as
the author of the Shakespeare oeuvre but also as the leader of the movement to
establish drama in early modern England, in The Earl of Oxford and the
Making of Shakespeare by Richard Malim.
DVS Committee, 2015
Members
Hon. President
Christopher Dams
[email protected]
Chairman
Kevin Gilvary
[email protected]
Vice-Chairman
Eddi Jolly
[email protected]
Hon. Secretary
Richard Malim
[email protected]
Hon. Treasurer
Graham Ambridge
[email protected]
Member
Alexander Waugh
[email protected]
Member
Heward Wilkinson
[email protected]
Other Positions
Newsletter Editor
Kevin Gilvary
Website Manager
Bryan Ambridge
deveresociety.co.uk
[email protected]
2
July 2015
Kevin Gilvary reports on a remarkable identification.
Shakespeare: His True Likeness?
The biggest story concerning
Shakespeare in the last year is without
doubt written by Mark Griffiths in the
issue of Country Life dated 20 July 2015.
In this article, Griffiths identifies
figures on the title page of The Herball
or Generall Historie of Plantes which was
first published late in 1597 or early in
1598. The 1,484 page book is
described as the largest single-volume
work on plants that has been published
in English. The author was John
Gerard(1545-1612) a “pioneering
botanist” who designed and supervised
Burghley’s gardens at Cecil House in
the Strand and at Theobalds House,
near Hatfield.
The essence of the case is that the figure on the middle right of the title page is the
only known portrait of Shakespeare made in his lifetime. Mark Griffiths came to his
identification by following clues in a rebus – an enigmatical symbol – which he claims
indicates that William Shakespeare had helped Gerard with translations from Latin and
Greek and that the figure above the rebus is “what Shakespeare looked like.” This
figure holds a fritillary and an ear of sweetcorn, which point to Shakespeare's poem
Venus and Adonis and his play Titus Andronicus
The other figures depicted on the title page include, at the very top, in a central
position, Flora, the Roman goddess of nature; upper left is the author, is John Gerard
himself. The figure on the to right has been identified as Rembert Dodoens (15171585), the Flemish botanist, whose book Cruydeboeck (1563) was translated into Latin as,
Stirpium historiae pemptades sex (1583) and formed the basis for Gerard’s Herball. The
figure on the middle left is William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the Queen’s Secretary.
The title page was engraved by William Rogers, who was an experienced renowned
engraver, whose work was used on many publications between 1590 and 1610.
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Alexander Waugh writes to Country Life (for publication on 27 May):
Sir, Professor Stanley Wells writes that the newly identified picture of Shakespeare
on the title page of Gerard’s Herball (1597) is ‘obviously not Shakespeare’ but neither
he, nor Mark Griffiths, the botanist who made this discovery, have fully understood
why it is obviously Shakespeare. That the figure is a poet is undisputed. In his right
hand he holds a Narcissus lily (snakeshead fritillary) which is the flower that grew from
the spilled blood of Adonis in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (1593). In his other hand
he holds a cob of ‘Turkey Corne’ (which we call ‘maize’ of ‘sweet corn’), again
representing Adonis who is god of corn. So just as the engraving shows Lord Burghley
garbed as Soloman, so (to his left) we have a living poet, garbed as Adonis who was not
only god of corn, but a famous garden lover.
In those days poets were nicknamed after the works that they wrote – Sydney, for
instance, was ‘Astrophel’, Watson was ‘Amyntas’, Spenser was ‘Collyn,’ Nashe was
‘Pierce’, Drayton was ‘Rowland’ etc. Three years before the publication of Herball
Shakespeare was nicknamed ‘Adon’ by the poet Thomas Edwards in his ‘Envoy to
Narcissus.’ Given, as Professor Wells concedes, that Mark Griffiths has persuasively
identified the other three figures on the title page as Gerard, Dodoens and Lord
Burghley, the identification of the poet holding the symbols of Adonis can only be
‘ADON’ who is indisputably Shakespeare, the author of the poem Venus and Adonis, so
popular that it had already run to three editions by 1597. It should also be noted that
the Narcissus lily grows out of Adonis’s blood only in Shakespeare, all other variations
of the Greek myth, (including that of Ovid) say anemone.
This leaves only one important question unanswered. How did Shakespeare manage
to enter the circle of Gerard and the service of Lord Burghley without leaving a trace
until now? If Mr Griffiths and Professor Wells care to ask me, I should be happy to
enlighten them.
Alexander Waugh
In a later note, Alexander adds:
Oxford is the the final figure. De Vere has turned away from Burghley who stands
opposite. The monogram which the Stratfordians are saying is Norton’s print mark, but
Mark Griffiths has convincingly argued is not, contains the words ADON and
Oxenford and EARL and the three Ws of Vere Vero nil Verius and a W for
Shakespeare and a shaken spear. The important discovery is that the other three
characters are Gerard, Dotoens and Burghley garbed as Soloman, Theophrastus and
Dioscrities - all people who helped to make the book. De Vere obviously assisted too.
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The identification of the fourth man as
Shakespeare depends largely on the unique
and unambiguous interpretation of this
rebus (a figure in which words are
represented by combinations of pictures
and individual letters).
The Fourth Man, by Mark Griffiths (on Gerard, Burghley and Shakespeare),
will be published in 2016
Mark Griffiths replies to Alexander:
[While] I am convinced that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote Shakespeare’s
works, I do not however dismiss the serious examination of the Oxford question for a
moment. On the contrary, it has yielded some excellent results. I’d point to Jan Cole’s
work on life at Cecil House (some of it published in the De Vere Society newsletter)
and to Eddi Jolly’s illuminating studies of Lord Burghley’s library, which shows a
remarkable correlation between the books it contained and Shakespeare’s sources. [How
nice that someone other than an Oxfordian actually reads the DVS website. Ed.]
I’ll say something else, which will doubtless bring more trouble on my head: serious
Oxfordians do things rather well. You’ve a relish for historical investigation, an
acceptance of biographical and topical relevance, an open-mindedness about interdisciplinary studies, and a curiosity about documents, records, artefacts, cryptology, and
all manifestations of Elizabethan culture and politics. Shakespeare’s tragedy is that
some - by no means all, but too many - of his academic supporters disdain such matters
as irrelevant, presumptuous, old-fashioned, grunt work or, worse, done and dusted,
conclusively resolved many years ago.
For example, you’ve no difficulty in seeing how a single flower, Fritillaria meleagris,
could lead into an entirely new field of inquiry. With the sole exception of Colin
Burrow at All Souls, Shakespeare’s editors have failed even to spot the Fritillaria. ‘Why
worry about its identification? It has to be an Anemone – Ovid said so. In any case, it’s
just a flower, a footnote at best.’ No – it is a key to Shakespeare or, as you would have
him, Oxford. Detail, properly diagnosed, is all.
Before I go back to tying-in my roses, I should just mention Polonius. Some
Oxfordians and that film Anonymous rely heavily on the idea that he’s a caricature of
Burghley, Oxford’s hated father-in-law. I’ve interrogated this pretty hard over the past
few years and have much material as a result, which will have to wait for my book. But
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I’ll say here that one has only to read his letters and Council contributions to know that,
even at the end of his life, Burghley’s tone was clipped, pungent, urgent by the
standards of most 16th Century statesmen. Visiting diplomats complained that this
most intricate and subtle of men was shockingly blunt and brusque. Prolix, Polonian, he
was not, or straying-witted.
Some aspects of Polonius judged to be satirical or comic since the 18th Century
were nothing of the kind in their day – the coining of sententiae, for example, or the
handing of precepts from parent to child (cf the Countess in All’s Well That Ends Well she does it, and no one thinks she’s a dementing old pedant, nor did early readers think
that of Burghley and Raleigh when their precepts were published).
The esteem and affection that Elizabeth felt for Burghley peaked in the years just
before and after his death. Veneration of him continued under King James, not least
because Sir Robert Cecil succeeded him as the monarch’s chief minister. As you
Oxfordians know so well, people at this level of society knew how to crack a code, sift
an allusion, smell a cleverly concealed rat. Had Polonius been remotely identifiable as
Burghley, it would have brought Shakespeare’s – or Oxford’s - career to an abrupt and
possibly bloody end.
On those feasibility grounds alone, we can rule out the theory that Corambis, the
alternative name of the Polonius character in the shoddy, pirated First Quarto of
Hamlet, was intended as a jibe at Burghley’s motto Cor unum, Via una (‘one heart, one
way’). But you’d need a loose grasp of Latin to read Corambis as ‘two hearts’, as one or
two early 20th century scholars tried to do, and an even looser one, and of botany too,
to see Corambis as equating to crambe bis, i.e. reheated cabbage, a Roman figure of
speech for windy and obnoxious verbosity.
Being a bootleg edition, Hamlet Q1 is full of odd and misspelt names. Corambis is
one of them. It ought to be Corambus, one of a loose bag of all-purpose names that
Shakespeare resorted to on occasion. As such, a Corambus gets a name-check in All’s
Well That Ends Well. In his Oxford edition of Hamlet, GR Hibbard brilliantly explained
why Shakespeare needed to change Polonius (his original name for Denmark’s
counsellor) to Corambis [sic = Corambus] for the performance at Oxford University
on which Q1 was based.
Far from a making a mockery of Burghley, Polonius by negative example illustrates
everything he judged essential in the chief counsellor’s office.
eVer Yours
Mark Griffiths
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Based on a Talk given to the DVS at Oxford in April 2015.
Who Wrote The VVisdome of Doctor Dodypoll?
By Michael Le Gassick
In 1600 the play The VVisdome of Doctor Dodypoll was published without attribution to
any author. On the title page, it stated that the play had been Acted by the Children of
Powles, a troupe under the patronage of Edward de Vere, 17 th Earl of Oxford for a
while. They had been mainly active in the 1580s, performing plays by John Lyly. The
title page implies performances at Court during the 1580’s, and perhaps later at the first
Blackfriars Theatre. Furthermore, Henslowe records the frenshe docter in October 1594. It
is likely to have been ‘one of the old plays’, a small deluge of which (including
Shakespeare quartos) arrived at the printers between 1598 or so and 1610. Well
constructed, with plausible continuity, amusing comedy and farce, satire at the expense
of quack doctors and of the extremes of ‘perspectives’ in painting, plus evocative
speeches, make the play a ‘Shakespearean’ comedy, indicative of a practised playwright.
The Doctor in the title displays the opposite of wisdom, performing a relatively
minor role; but he does provide the ‘love potion’ which gives a young prince a burning
head and stomach, causing him to ‘lose his reason’ in temporary madness. Just like the
Doctor in merrie Wives, he’s a running clown-type ‘Frenchman’ joke. Both Doctors are
‘in love’ and both are duly thwarted. However, the main plot of Dodypoll concerns the
romance of Lucilia and Earl Lassingbergh.
Dodypoll shows marked similarities with Two Gentlemen of Verona. Both contain a
cheeky servant, (named Haunce and Launce respectively), who make witty and
subversive comments:
For as an Asse may weare a Lyons skinne,
So noble Earles have sometimes Painters binne.
(566-7)
…I aske what is man?
A Pancake tost in Fortunes frying pan.
(562-3)
He informs his master the musicians can’t play:
One of your Haultboyes is out of tune’ - Out of tune, villaine? which way?
Drunke (sir) ant please you
(199-201)
The main story of Dodypoll closes matches events in the life of Edward de Vere in
1570-71. Earl Lassingbergh is poor, spending his time as a painter in the house of rich
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jeweller Flores. Flores is humble, but has ambitions to marry his two children into
wealth and social standing. Lucilia is attractive and in love with the Earl. He’s unsure as
to his intentions, but both are aware of her lower social status. Lassingbergh likes to
paint her, but Flores is suspicious of their relationship, mainly because of the Earl’s lack
of wealth.
Flores fails to marry his other daughter, Cornelia, who is deformed by a crooked
back, to Prince Alberdure, son of Earl Cassimere, a widower. However, after
Lassingbergh’s talents in painting and music have been recognised by Earl Cassimere
and his son, they all encourage Lassingbergh to marry Lucilia. Lassingbergh panics and
flees to the forest. After an encounter with the Enchanter and fairies, Lassingbergh
finally relents and agrees to marry Lucilia. Cassimere, having assured Flores of the
latter’s ‘innate nobleness’, proposes to Cornelia in spite of her deformity and lower
social status.
Earl Oxford, a ‘poor scholar’, lived in the house of wealthy William Cecil, of
humble origins, with attractive daughter, Anne, and son, Robert, deformed by a
crooked back. Plans to marry Anne into wealth and status (Sir Philip Sidney) failed.
Oxford’s talents were recognised, so Cecil enthusiastically pressed him to marry Anne.
In support, the Queen raised Cecil to Lord Burleigh, evening out the disparity in social
status between the Earl and Anne. Oxford panicked and fled to the Continent, but
subsequently fell in line.)
The underlying preoccupations of this playwright, which chime with those of many
of Shakespeare’s comedies – and with many poems by Edward de Vere are: choice in
love ; social inequality; reason and love; dreams and visions; fortune; reason linked with
madness.
Strong correspondences between both merrie Wives of Windsor, 1602 Quarto, and A
Midsommer nights dreame, 1600 Quarto, produce problems of authorship. If Shakespeare
did not write Dodypoll, then one author must have ‘borrowed’ from the other. There are
also correspondences between Dodypoll and Winters Tale and (once) Julius Caesar.
Merrie Wives of Windsor and Doctor Dodypoll
The full title consists of the play consists of forty eight words:
A most pleasaunt and excellent conceited comedie, of Syr Iohn Falstaffe, and the merrie wiues of
Windsor. Entermixed with sundrie variable and pleasing humors, of Syr Hugh the Welch knight,
Iustice Shallow, and his wise cousin M. Slender. With the swaggering vaine of Auncient Pistoll, and
Corporall Nym. By William Shakespeare. As it hath bene diuers times acted by the Right Honorable
my Lord Chamberlaines seruants. Both before her Maiestie, and else-where.
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This lengthy title suggests that it belongs to the 1570’s, rather than the 1590’s.
Doctors Dodypoll and Cayus are clearly the same creation - the similarities are so close
they cannot be dismissed as coincidence:
Extracts from speeches by Doctor Dodypoll
By gar if you will see de Marshan hang himself say no:
A good shesse by garr.
(114-5)
Bid Ursula brushe my two, tree, fine Damaske gowne;
spread de rishe coverlet on de faire bed; vashe de fine plate;
smoake all de shambra vit de sweete perfume.
(510-3)
I spit your nose, and yet is no violence, I will give a
de prove a dee good reason, reguard Monsieur, you
no point eate a de meate to daie, you be de empty, be gar
you be emptie, you be no point vel, you no point vell, be garr
you be vere sicke, you no point leave
(750-5)
Faite, and trot, briefe den, very briefe, very laccingue,
de prince your sonne, feast with de knave Jeweller Flores,
and he for make a prince, love a de foule croope-shouldra
daughter Cornelia, give a de prince a de love poudra…
Experience teach her by garr, de poudra have grand force
for enflama de bloud, too much make a de rage and
de present furie: be garr I feare de mad man as de
devilla, garr blesse a.
Extracts from speeches by Doctor Cayus
Goe run up met your heeles, and bring away
De oyntment in de vindoe present:
Make hast John Rugbie. O I am almost forget
My simples in a boxe in de Counting-house:
O Jeshu vat be here, a devella, a devella: (I.4.63-69)
Here give dat same to sir Hu, it ber ve chalenge
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(915-926)
July 2015
Begar tel him I will cut his nase, will you?
(I.4.95-96)
Begar de preest be a coward Jack knave,
He dare not shew his face.
(II.3.32-33)
Begar excellent vel: and if you speak pour moy,
I shall presente you de gesse of all de gentelmen
Mon patinces. I begar I sall.
(II.3.95-97)
A Midsommer nights dreame and Doctor Dodypoll
A similarity of plot progresses from the anonymous play Wily Beguilde, through
Doctor Dodypoll, to Midsommer nights dreame. In all three plays lovers resist the
blandishments of fathers, seek refuge in a forest, are influenced by the intervention of a
Robin Goodfellow figure, with Fairies and enchantments, before being reconciled and
given the blessing of the fathers. ‘Fairies’ and reconciliation also occur in merrie Wives, of
course.
1. Chasing through the Forest
Doctor Dodypoll: Lassingbergh rushes off:
Nothing shall hinder my resolved intent,
But I will restlesse wander from the world,
Lucilia: And I will never cease to follow thee,
Till I have wonne thee from these unkinde thoughts.
(760-4)
Lassingbergh:
‘Wilt thou not cease then to pursue me still,
Should I entreate thee to attend me thus, …
Now I forbid thee, thou pursuest like winde,
(963-969)
Midsommer nights dreame: Demetrius:
I love thee not: therefore pursue me not, …
Hence, get thee gone, and follow mee no more.
Helena: You draw mee, you hard hearted Adamant.
Demetrius: ‘I will not stay thy questions. Let me goe.
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(557-564)
(604)
July 2015
Dodypoll: Lassingbergh, resting on a grassy bank, insists:
Pray thee away, for whilst thou art so neere,
No sleepe will seaze on my suspicious eyes.
Midsommer nights dreame Hermia to Lysander, seeking a grassy bank to sleep on:
Ly further off, yet, doe not lye so neere. . . .
Ly further off, in humane modesty:
(686 & 699)
2. Intervention of Enchanter and Fairies
Dodypoll: The Enchanter is saddened by Lassingbergh’s harsh words:
Heere stay your wand’ring steps: chime silver strings,
Chime hollow caves, and chime you whistling reedes,
For musick is the sweetest chime for love:
Spirits binde him, …
(1001-1004)
Midsommer nights dreame:A Fairie:
I must goe seeke some dew droppes here
And hang a pearle in every couslippes eare.
(378)
Then a famous speech:
‘Twas I that lead you through the painted meades,
Where the light Fairies daunst upon the flowers,
Hanging on every leafe an orient pearle,
Which strooke together with the silken winde,
Of their loose mantels made a silver chime.
‘Twas I that winding my shrill bugle horne,
Made a guilt palace breake out of the hill,
Filled suddenly with troopes of knights and dames,
Who daunst and reveld whilste we sweetly slept,
Upon a bed of Roses wrapt all in goulde.
(1088-1097)
No, not Oberon in The Dream, but The Enchanter in Dodypoll! He is leading
Lassingbergh and Lucilia, bound by spirits, who bring in a banquet and sing a Song.
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3. Dreams and Visions
Dodypoll: Prince Leander:
‘My Lord, I had a vision this last night,
Wherein me thought I sawe the prince your sonne, …
I wakt, but then contemned it as a dreame’ (1592-1597)
Alphonso:
…Hardenbergh your sonne
Perhaps deludes me with a visition,
To mocke my vision,…
(1601-3)
Midsommer nights dreame:Oberon:
When they next wake, all this derision
Shall seeme a dreame, and fruitelesse vision.
Titania: My Oberon, what visions have I seene!
(1375-6)
(1543)
Bottom:
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dreame,)
past the wit of man, to say, what dreame it was.
(1676-8)
4. Reason and Love
Midsommer nights dreame: Lysander:
The will of man is by his reason swai’d:
And reason saies you are the worthier maide.
‘So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason,
(759-760)
(762)
Bottom: And yet, to say the truth, reason and love
keepe little company together, now a daies
(932-3)
Dodypoll: Alphonso declares that unlike his son:
I love with judgement, and upon cold bloud,
He with youths furie, without reasons stay
(1655-6)
Midsommer nights dreame :Theseus:
Lovers, and mad men have such seething braines,
Such shaping phantasies, that apprehend more,
Then coole reason ever comprehends.
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(1741-2)
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July 2015
A Winters Tale and Doctor Dodypoll
1. Dreams and Visions
Dodypoll: Alphúonso has recourse to feigned ‘dreaming’:
Where in a slumber I did strongly thinke,
I should be married to the beauteous Dutchesse:…
Duke Constantine her brother with his Lords
And all our peeres (me thought) attending us,
Forth comes my princelie Katherine, led by death,…
I frighted in my sleepe, strugled and sweat.’
(670-679)
Constantine accuses Alphonso of going back on his nuptial agreement:
‘With vaine pretext of visions or of dreames.’
(1706)
Duchess Katherine later assures Alphonso, referring to herself:
‘No, no, my Lord, this is your vision,
That hath not frighted but enamoured you.’
(1720-1)
Winter’s Tale:Leontes:
‘Your actions are my Dreames’.
You had a Bastard by Polixenes,
And I but dream’d it:’
(III.2.82-5)
Antigonus:
‘I have heard (but not beleev’d) the Spirits o’th’dead
May walke againe: If such thing be, thy Mother
Appear’d to me last night, for ne’re was dreame
So like a waking…
This was so, and no slumber: Dreames, are toyes,
Yet for this once, yea superstitiously,
I will be squar’d by this. I do beleeve
Hermione hath suffer’d death,…’
(III.3.15-41)
Dodypoll: A Servant comments when Alberdure is found safe, not drowned:
‘My lord, most fortunate were that event,
That would restore your sonne from death to life.‘
Hardenbergh is sceptical:
‘As though a vision should do such a deed.’ (1609-1611)
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2. Social Status
Dodypoll: Flores sees no reason why his daughter, Cornelia, should not marry a prince:
We are (by birth) more noble than our fortunes,
Why should we then, shun any meanes we can,
To raise us to our auncient states againe?
(220-4)
Winter’s Tale: Perdita speaking of King Polixenes:
The selfe-same Sun that shines upon his Court,
Hides not his visage from our Cottage, but
Lookes on alike…This dreame of mine
Being now awake…
(IV.3.457-462)
Dodypoll: Earl Cassimere surprises Flores by asking for Cornelia’s hand, rejecting the
suggestion that he should choose a beauteous dame of high degree:
Ah Flores, Flores, were I not assured,
Both of thy noblenesse, thy birth and merite:
Yet my affection vow’d with friendships toong,
In spight of all base changes of the world,
That tread on noblest head once stoopt by fortune,
(1269-1278)
3. Fortune
Cassimere is philosophical:
Grieve not deare friends, these are but casuall darts
That wanton Fortune daily casts at those
In whose true bosomes perfect honour growes.’
(1237-1239)
Winter’s Tale Florizel responding to Camillo’s question as to where he will go:
But as the th’unthought-on accident is guiltie
To what we wildely do, so we professe
Our selves to be the slaves of chance, and flyes
Of every winde that blowes.
(IV.4.528-541)
4. Reason and Madness
Winter’s Tale: Florizel, Paulina and Leontes connect reason and madness:
Florizel:
…If my Reason
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Will thereto be obedient: I have reason:
If not, my sences better pleas’d with madnesse,
Do bid it welcome.’
(IV.4.483-6)
Paulina:
That King Leontes shall not have an Heire,
Till his lost Child be found: Which it shall,
Is all as monstrous to our humane reason.
(V.1.39-41)
Leontes:
When I shall see this Gentleman, thy speeches
Will bring me to consider that, which may
Unfurnish me of Reason.
(V.1.121-2)
Julius Caesar and Doctor Dodypoll
Dodypoll: Alberdure in the forest::
Then reason’s fled to animals I see,
And Ile vanish like Tobaccho smoake.
(907)
The first line has been the subject of much critical comment, appearing as:
‘O Judgement! thou are fled to brutish Beasts,
And Men have lost their Reason.’
(Mark Antony J Caesar III.2.105-106)
It occurs similarly in Hamlet (1605):
‘O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason’ (Hamlet line 338)
Every Man out of his Humour and Doctor Dodypoll
In Every Man out of his Humour, printed in 1600, performed in 1599, Ben Jonson wrote:
Reason long since is fled to animals, you know
(Clove III.1.1996-7).
EMO makes much of ‘tobacco smoke’. Jonson is said to be mocking another writer, or
perhaps he was using what might have become a ‘catch phrase’. Given the printed dates
of both plays, it is difficult to say who first penned the expression, but Jonson did not
write Doctor Dodypoll or Julius Caesar, so it is likely he picked it up from a performance of
Doctor Dodypoll (or perhaps from a sight of the manuscript), given the combination of
‘reason’ and ‘tobacco smoke’.
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Dates of Compostion: Orthodox (O) and Proposed (P)
If ‘Shakespeare’ wrote Doctor Dodypoll, there is really no problem. If not, then
problems arise from the close dates of printing and ‘orthodox’ opinion as to dates of
writing. Unfortunately for the orthodox view so many quartos of Shakespeare plays
were printed well before the First Folio, the orthodox ‘bible’.
Wily Beguilde
Stationers’
Register
Performed/Notes
2 Nov 1606
Wylie Beguylie performed at
Oxford in 1566/7
O 1596; P 1566
merrie Wives of Windsor
18 Jan 1602
O 1596-98; P 1569/70
Doctor Dodypoll
7 Oct 1600
Acted by Children of Paul’s;
Henslowe: ‘the frenshe docter'
1594; referenced by Nashe in
1594?
8 Oct 1600
A Pastorall of Phillyda and
Choryn played at Court 1584.
Meres noted MND in 1598
O c. 1590
P 1571
Midsomm. nights dreame
O c. 1595.
P c. 1583
Winter’s Tale
Revised for wedding 1594/6?
8 Nov 1623
A Winters nights pastime
performed at Court 1594
8 Nov 1623
? Witnessed at Globe 1599
O 1610
P 1590-4
Julius Caesar
O 1599
P 1594-8
Plays do not contain so much similarity without copying. If copying is ruled out,
then the playwright is one and the same. The indications are that the Earl of Oxford, as
author of Wily Beguilde, went on to write merrie Wives, re-introduced the character of the
Doctor in Dodypoll, then moved ideas, scenes and language on to Midsommer nights
dreame, Winters Tale and Julius Caesar. The VVisdome of Doctor Dodypoll is not usually
associated with the Bard, so it might be more sensible to admit the play as an early
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work by a young Shakespeare, before the trip to Italy. The correspondences cannot be
dismissed, however disagreeable this may be to a Shakespeare specialist with strongly
pre-formulated opinions. Various playwrights such as George Peele and John Lyly have
been proposed as the author of Dodypoll - but either William Shakespeare wrote Doctor
Dodypoll or the author of Dodypoll wrote the Shakespeare plays. If neither is the case,
then Doctor Dodypoll, which was probably written before merrie Wives and A Midsommer
nights dreame implies that Shakespeare spent time gleaning idea from the manuscript
and/or attending a performance of it (perhaps when it was called the frenshe docter).
Alternatively, if Doctor Dodypoll were written after the plays of Shakespeare, then the
author of Dodypoll must have had access to Shakespeare’s manuscripts, and/or paid
special attention at performances. In the case of merrie Wives, Doctor Cayus is probably
a parody of a real Doctor John Cayus, professor of Medicine at Cambridge in the 1550s
and ‘60s, but he died in 1573, so that by the later orthodox dating of the play, he would
have had less impact with a sophisticated audience.
In the case of Midsommer nights dreame, either or both authors could have seen a
performance of A Pastorall of Phillyda and Chorin at Court in 1584. With Titania seen as
Queen Elizabeth and Bottom/the Ass as the French Duc d’Alencon, in a comic parody
of 1570s marriage proposals, which had dissolved by 1581, then writing as late as
between 1594 and 1596 would not have been topically amusing to any audience. Similar
arguments as to who copied from whom apply to Winters Tale. A performance of A
Wynters nightes pastime is recorded at Court in 1594, which suggests that the author of
Dodypoll and/or Shakespeare could have been present. Obviously, Shakespeare would
have had the opportunity of reading Doctor Dodypoll in print, but only if he composed
Winters Tale and Julius Caesar after 1600.
One thing is certain: the author of Doctor Dodypoll really knew his Shakespeare!
References
The VVisdome of Doctor Dodypoll, 1600 facsimile Malone Society edition 1965, OUP, ed.
Matson
merrie Wives of Windsor, 1602 Quarto facsimile, Sidgwick & Jackson 1939, ed. Greg.
Midsommer nights dreame, 1600 Quarto facsimile, Malone Society OUP 1995, ed. Berger.
Wily Beguilde, 1606, Malone Society facsimile reprint, ed. Greg 1912.
Anderson, Mark, “Shakespeare” by Another Name, Gotham Books, 2005.
Gilvary, Kevin, ed., Dating Shakespeare’s Plays, Parapress 2010.
Ward, B M, The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, John Murray, 1928.
Shakespeare, Mr. William, Comedies, Histories & Tragedies., First Folio 1623, The Norton
Facsimile, ed. Charlton Hinman, Paul Hamlyn 1968.
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‘The Scene Vienna’:
some Hapsburg elements in Measure for Measure
by Jan Cole
This essay represents some initial research in response to Christopher Dams’
challenge to extend the approach taken by Richard Paul Roe in The Shakespeare Guide to
Italy (2011) and to look at the plays in other European settings with respect to locations
and what they might reveal of the author’s knowledge. Christopher noted that Measure
for Measure appears to exist in a Viennese vacuum, peopled by characters with
Latin/Greek or English names. Could it be that Vienna is either a typographical error
or an editorial gloss for some other city, perhaps Venice? The plot is driven by a
draconian law against adultery, which to my mind has a Venetian ring. I could discern
no local references to Vienna, or indeed to anywhere else at all. (DVS newsletter, 20.3,
Spring 2013
This essay will try to ascertain, from the text and contemporary history, whether a
Viennese location was originally intended. The only extant text of the play is that in the
First Folio (1623). There appears to be at least one clear local reference to Vienna in the
play, which is the name of the convent ‘Isabella’ is about to enter and which belongs to
the order of Saint Clare. A church marked ‘St Clare’ certainly appears on Braun and
Hogenberg’s view of Vienna published in 1572, but more importantly the order of St
Clare had existed in Vienna since the 13th century.
A new convent and church,
close to the ducal palace, was
built by Elizabeth of Austria,
the widow of the French king
Charles IX, between 1581 and
1583 on the site of the present
Palais Pallavicini (built 178284) at Josephsplatz 5, Vienna.
It is possible that this fact
might be known at least to
some travelled members of a
theatre audience from that
date onwards.
Klarissinnenkloster Maria, Königin der Engel (Convent of Poor Clares)
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The heavy moralistic atmosphere of the play also reflects elements of Hapsburgian rule at
this period, when the Catholic dynasty was eager to prevent any further spread of
Protestantism in Europe.
The basic story of the play - the one on which Cinthio based his tale published in
1565 - had been circulating in southern Europe for some time, with slight variables in
its setting, plot and the names of the characters. In most versions the names of the
characters are Italian, but in some they are French. Why then was Shakespeare’s Measure
for Measure set in Vienna? This question is difficult to answer with certainty.
Measure for Measure is certainly a ‘problem play’ in several ways. It is assumed
(though the documentary authenticity has been questioned) that it was performed on 26
December 1604, the night before Oxford’s daughter, Susan Vere, was married to Philip
Herbert, Earl of Montgomery. If it was staged on this occasion, the play’s emphasis on
virginity and (despite the potential sexual immoralities of the plot) on legitimate sexual
relations within marriage was presumably felt to be appropriate for a pre-nuptial
celebration. Nothing is known of the play before this date or afterwards until it
appeared in the Comedies section of the First Folio published in 1623. The play’s known
printed sources take us back to the years between 1565 and 1583. Giraldo Cinthio
(1504-1573) included the tale in his prose work Hecatommithi (1565). George Whetstone
(1550-1587) dramatised Cinthio’s tale in English as a two-part play, Promus and Cassandra
(1578), which was probably never staged. A little later Whetstone translated Cinthio’s
tale again, this time in prose, in his Heptameron of Civil Discourses (1582). Cinthio also
dramatised his own prose tale as the tragic-comedy Epitia (published 1583).
Cinthio’s tale was set in Innsbruck
In Cinthio’s tale the ruler is not a ‘Duke’ but an ‘Emperor’ called ‘Massimiano’ or
Maximilian, the name of two sixteenth-century Holy Roman Emperors and Hapsburg
rulers, and the author of Measure for Measure, if following Cinthio, may have regarded
this in itself as a directive to setting the play in Austria. Cinthio’s location for the action
is Innsbruck (‘Inspruchi’) in the western Tyrol. This was, indeed, the residence of the
Emperor Maximillian in the 1490s and later of Ferdinand II, who became ruler of the
Tyrol in 1564. Halfway between Munich and Verona, Innsbruck commands the
northern access to the Brenner Pass, one of the lowest and easiest mountain passes
across the Alps into Italy.
However, Whetstone’s Promus and Cassandra situated the story in a city called Julio,
following classical geography (Ptolemy’s ‘Juliobona’) to match the classical names of his
protagonists. The author and translator, Lewes Lewkenor (1560-1637) identified
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‘Juliobana’ with Vienna, as did a French dictionary published in 1670. Whetstone’s
sometime ruler of Julio was ‘Corvinus, King of Hungary and Bohemia’, and this relates
to a real Corvinus who attacked Austria several times, installed a governor there, and
died there in 1490 – see Draudt (2005) and Sjögren (1961).
The author of Measure for Measure (matching Whetstone’s location) has the location
as Vienna, but gave the ruler an Italian name (‘Vincentio’) and the Italian title of ‘Duke’.
In fact, the ruler of Vienna was an Emperor (Maximilian II, 1527-1576), followed by his
son the Emperor Rudolph II (1562-1612) until 1583 when he moved his court to
Prague, leaving his brother, Archduke Ernst (1553-1595) in charge of Vienna. Vienna
was known as the seat of the Hapsburg rulers until 1583 and again from 1612.
The earliest known version of the tale was set in Milan
The earliest documented version of the story exists in a letter of 1547 written by
Joseph Macarius, a Hungarian student living in Vienna, to a relative and benefactor
living in Hungary. He told the story as follows:
Two citizens of a town near Milan had a quarrel, resulting in one of them
being fatally stabbed by the other. The perpetrator was arrested and thrown
into prison. His beautiful wife tried every means to secure his pardon and
release, requesting the same from the chief magistrate who went by the
name of ‘the Spanish Count’. The Count was a bachelor and, infatuated by
her beauty, informed her that the only price he would accept for her
husband’s pardon would be possession of her.
Not knowing what to do, she begged time to reflect on the proposition.
She then consulted her relatives, particularly her brother-in-law, who advised
that she should save her husband’s life at any cost and that, since she was not
a willing party to the act, her soul would remain free of sin. The day after she
had submitted to the Count, she learnt that he had beheaded her husband. She
reproached him with this but, finding that he turned a deaf ear to her, she
travelled to Milan to consult ‘Don Ferdinando Gonzaga, the brother of the
Duke of Mantua and the Emperor’s vice-regent for that province’.
Gonzaga advised the woman to keep silent.
Two months later, he invited the magistrate and his citizens to a banquet
in Milan, ordering the deceived wife to be present but hidden. After the
banquet, Gonzaga called the magistrate aside to another room and informed
him of his offence. He then ordered the magistrate to marry the woman and
pay her 3,000 ducats as dowry. Conducting him back to the hall, the woman
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was called forth, together with a priest, and they were married. Gonzaga told
the woman that her honour had been restored, but he ordered that the
magistrate should be beheaded the next day ‘as a requital for this woman’s
first husband’s death’. The sentence was carried out and approved of by the
Emperor.
In the letter, Macarius noted that there were several versions of the story in
circulation and wondered whether his correspondent hadn’t heard a better one. The
letter is dated from Vienna, 1 October 1547, and survives in the Hungarian Public
Record Office in Budapest among the papers of the Nádasdy family. Had the tale
originated earlier in Italy and travelled to Vienna? If so, we might also ask why Cinthio
changed the location of the events from Milan to Innsbruck?
A tragic version of the story was written in Latin verse by Claude Rouillet
(published 1556) and then translated into French in 1563. Another French version in
Traité de la Conformité des merveilles anciennes avec les modernes by Estienne (1566) named the
corrupt judge as the Prévost de la Vouste -compare Shakespeare’s ‘Provost’, a term for
an administrator that was also used in Vienna (Patrouch). A version appeared in
Belleforest in the sixth book of Histoires Tragiques (1582), where the events take place in
Turin and the corrupt judge is named as the governor of Piedmont, deputy ruler for
Henri II. Other versions appeared, including one by Thomas Lupton in the second part
of Too Good to Be True (1581) and in Thomas Beard’s The Theatre of God’s Judgements
(1589; 1597), a savage treatise on immorality and its punishment.
According to a note in J.O. Halliwell-Phillips’s critical edition of Shakespeare’s Works
(1853-1865), the same version as Macarius noted in his letter appeared later in Simon
Goulart’s Histoires Admirables et Memorables advenues de nostre temps (various dates are given
for this in different sources: 1603, 1607, 1618), where, intriguingly, the date of 1547 is
given for the tale’s events. The exact repetition of the date suggests, perhaps, that
Goulart knew that the tale had been circulating in Vienna at that time. In Goulart’s
version the town where the events took place is named as Como in Italy. Since Como is
less than 50 kilometres north of Milan, it seems likely he was putting a name to the
earlier version that had set the events in ‘a town near Milan’. The magistrate or ‘Spanish
Count’ is referred to in Goulart’s version as ‘a Spanish captain’, and the wronged
woman makes her complaint to ‘the Duke of Ferrara’. Had the Italian tale, which had
travelled to Vienna, then travelled on to Paris?
Francesco Cusani’s Storia di Milano (1861) states that the ruler of Milan in 1546 was
‘Don Ferrante’ or Ferdinando Gonzaga (d. 1557), and this concurs with Macarius’s
version. However, Macarius was mistaken in calling him the ‘brother of the Duke of
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Mantua’. This was Francesco Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua in 1547. Ferdinando’s brother
was Frederico Gonzaga. However, Ferdinando Gonzaga did bear the name of ‘Count’
as one of his titles. One can readily understand how the complexities of the genealogy
of ruling families confused Macarius, and how the titles of ‘dukes’ and ‘counts’ could be
easily mixed up.1
Whetstone was in Oxford’s literary circle in the 1570s
Oxford almost certainly knew George Whetstone (c.1544-c.1587), who came from a
wealthy family at Walcot Manor in Barnack near Stamford, Lincolnshire. The
Whetstone family would have known the Cecil family at their estates nearby. The
Whetstones also had family in Suffolk and Essex. In 1572, Whetstone served as a
soldier in the Netherlands, where he met George Gascoigne and Thomas Churchyard,
both known to Oxford. Whetstone had written some commendatory verses prefixed to
Gascoigne’s Posies (1575). Returning to London, he was living in Holborn when he
published The Rocke of Regarde (1576), a collection of sixty-eight tales in prose and verse
adapted from Italian originals, in four sections with dedications to the daughter of Lord
Grey of Wilton and to Thomas Cecil. In October 1577, Gascoigne died while he was
Whetstone’s guest at Barnack, and this was commemorated by Whetstone in a verse
pamphlet that was published as A Remembrance of the well-employed life and godly end of George
Gascoigne, Esquire. He also contributed a poem to The Paradise of Dainty Devises (1578),
and in the same year appeared his adaptation of Cinthio’s tale from Hecatommithi, which
he called Promus and Cassandra. This contained a preface addressed to William
Fleetwood, the Recorder for London, in which he commented on contemporary drama
in Europe and England. In September 1578, Whetstone accompanied Humphrey
Gilbert on his expedition to Newfoundland, returning in May 1579. In 1580 he visited
Italy.
His Heptameron of Civil Discourses (1582) was dedicated to Christopher Hatton and
contains a curious commendation of a certain ‘Segnior Phyloxenus’ - Whatsoever is worthy
in this book belongeth to Segnior Phyloxenus and his courtly favourers…It is not clear to whom
Whetstone was referring as ‘Phyloxenus’, but the pseudonym (a Greek name which
appears in Pausanius’ Guide to Greece as the friend of Dionysius when he was the dictator
of Sicily) is suggestive of a punning allusion to Oxford and his literary circle. Gascoigne
had coined a similar pseudonym when he claimed that his Certain Notes of Instruction
concerning the making of verse or rhyme in English (appended to his Posies) was written at the
request of Master Eduardo Donati. Both names may be allusions to Edward de Vere.
In the prose version of the tale in his Heptameron of Civil Discourses (1582),
Whetstone’s full title is The rare Historie of Promus and Cassandra reported by Isabella. I have
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been unable to ascertain whether this name occurs in Cinthio’s tale or in other versions,
but Whetstone certainly used the name for his narrator, the same name that appeared
prominently as the heroine of Measure for Measure.
Roger North and Jacopo Strada in Vienna
The English courtier and diplomat, Roger North (1530-1600), the brother of
Thomas North, the translator of Plutarch, was in Vienna in 1568. He was sent there,
with the Earl of Sussex, to invest the Emperor Maximilian II with the order of the
Garter. From 1564 Maximilian’s brother, Archduke Charles, was in negotiations to
marry Elizabeth I, and it is said that North discouraged the suit by putting forward an
opinion that the queen would never marry. However, on his return he was
commissioned to present the queen with a portrait of Archduke Charles. Six years later,
North was at the French court in Paris in 1574-75, when Oxford was there at the
beginning of his continental travels, and the two were together again on the Queen’s
Progress into East Anglia in the summer of 1578.
From Roger North (and also when he lived in Venice in 1575) Oxford is likely to
have heard something about the Viennese court and Jacopo Strada (1507-1588). The
latter was an Italian polymath, painter, architect, linguist, collector and merchant of art,
who had been trained with the painter Guiliano Romano in Mantua, and whose portrait
was painted by Titian in 1567. Strada had settled in Vienna in 1556, in a house on the
site of the present Bankgasse 12, and from 1564 became Court Antiquary there to the
Hapsburg rulers at the Hofburg palace. He was in Munich in 1566, in Venice in 156768 and returned to Vienna in 1568, where he put his artistic knowledge at the disposal
of the Hapsburg court. Strada acquired sculptures and works of art for three successive
Hapsburg emperors – Ferdinand I, Maximilian II and Rudolph II. In 1568 North and
Strada were in Vienna at the same time and would have known each other at court
there. Strada is believed to have worked with Maximilian II on his new summer palace,
the Schloss Neugebade at Simmering to the south-east of the city, advising on its buildings
and decorations and drawing up plans for its rooms and its elaborate gardens.
The construction, however, came to an abrupt end with Maximilian I’s death in
1576. There was no further rebuilding and in 1583 Rudolph II moved the court to
Prague. Little evidence of Renaissance Vienna remains, and the few courtyards and
gateways that remain show the influence of northern Italian architecture, particularly
Venice, Milan and Verona. The imperial palace of the Schonbrunn (originally a mansion
owned by Maximilian II) was developed only from 1642, eventually becoming the
elaborate Baroque edifice to be seen today.
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Gardens of Schloss Neugebade, Vienna (1649)
However, the Schloss Neugebade and its gardens have been recently restored. It
consisted of a long linear complex of buildings, relatively plain in appearance, with
brick-walled ornamental gardens on either long side of it. Around one of these gardens
was a large plantation (probably of fruit-trees, but it may well have included vineyards,
since the area was already well-known for wine production), with several access gates
and doors. If there is an actual Viennese topography in Measure for Measure, the
Neugebade is the obvious candidate for ‘Angelo’s house’. It is possible that the elaborate
directions involving Mariana’s entry into Angelo’s house for the ‘bedtrick’ assignation
(Act IV, sc.i) reflect aspects of the layout of the Schloss Neugebade:
He hath a garden circummur’d with brick,
Whose western side is with a vineyard back’d;
And to that vineyard is a planchèd gate
That to his opening is this bigger key;
This other doth command a little door
Which from the vineyard to the garden leads.
It has been noted that this description may also fit the vineyard that Edward de Vere
owned as part of his Wivenhoe estates in Essex. This may be compared with the
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precise directions to the shepherd’s ‘cote’ or cottage in As You Like It, which fits the
topography of Castle Hedingham, where a lane leading south from the village is still
called ‘Sheepcote Lane’. From an Oxfordian point of view, it is not impossible that the
author included (by association) English locations known to him in some of these
seemingly very specific topographical directions in the plays, folding them in with other
known locations abroad.2
Other English travellers in Vienna
The remarks of two English travellers suggest that Vienna in the last years of
Archduke Ernst’s rule, and for the next decade at least, was an unattractive city. Fynes
Moryson spent three days there in 1593, noting that the streets were narrow and
dangerous at night ‘from the great number of disordered people’. In 1616 William
Lithgow visited Vienna and thought it was ‘in no way comparable to a hundred cities
that I have seen’. Both statements seem to reflect the social, political and physical
decline of the city that followed Rudolph II’s departure to Prague in 1583, and after the
deputy ruler, Archduke Ernst also moved his court; he died in Brussels in 1595. If both
these comments reflect the opinion of Englishmen after 1583, this may have some
bearing on the playwright’s choice of Vienna for Measure for Measure, a city with a
reputation for unruliness.3
Shakespeare’s ‘Vienna’
Measure for Measure is the only Shakespeare play that has Vienna as a location. The
only other play that mentions Vienna is Hamlet (Act III, sc.ii), where the city is given as
the location of the ‘Mousetrap’ play:
‘The Mousetrap’. . . . is the image of a murder done in Vienna – Gonzago
is the Duke’s name; his wife’s, Baptista… A poisons him i’th’garden for his
estate. His name’s Gonzago. The story is extant, and written in very choice
Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.
It is known that this refers to the story of the murder of the Duke of Urbino by
Luigi Gonzaga in 1538. The place-name ‘Vienna’ in Hamlet appears to be a printer’s
error for ‘Venice’.4 However, we cannot necessarily extrapolate from this that the
‘Vienna’ in Measure for Measure is also a typographical error.
However, it is interesting that the Gonzaga name also appears in the earliest version
of the plot on which Measure for Measure was based, and that this was circulating in
Vienna in 1547. There is also a curious echo of Hamlet’s meditations upon death when
Claudio considers his own execution:
Aye, but to die and go we know not where;
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To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbèd ice;
To be imprison’d in the viewless winds
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling. O, ‘tis too horrible!
Act III, Sc. I
This may be a reflection of the possibility that the original Hamlet and Measure for
Measure were written about the same time, i.e. the early to mid 1580s.
The Stratfordian view is that the play dates from 1604 and reflects aspects of early
Stuart rule under James I, and this assumption dominates orthodox discussion. Some
commentators believe that Thomas Middleton, as editor of the play for the Folio in
1621 changed the source’s Italian (sic) location for an Austrian one, for no explicable
reason. In fact, Cinthio’s location is not Italy but Austria. Orthodox commentators are
at pains to relate the play’s politics to James I’s first parliaments, citing speeches in the
House of Commons, but giving no explanation as to how the actor William Shaxsper
could have heard such a speech.5 However, the text of Measure for Measure clearly
emphasises Vienna throughout - the city is named no less than nine times - and there
are also references to Hungary and Poland in the play, countries which were very
relevant to the Hapsburg rulers of Austria. Whether or not the text was altered for
inclusion in the First Folio, the play that we have clearly exists in a dramatised Catholic
Vienna. The Viennese setting has been rather loosely related to newsletters of 1595 see Kamps & Raber (2004). Gary Taylor (2004) has suggested that the play’s original
setting was not Vienna but somewhere in the Mediterranean, probably Ferarra in Italy.
From an Oxfordian viewpoint, we can be sure that the settings of the plays were
chosen for a reason. Most have been shown to be precise in respect of Oxford’s
experience and travels, as well as his topographical, political, historical and cultural
knowledge. It is not known whether Oxford visited Vienna. It was perhaps too far east
with regard to his chosen place for crossing the Alps, which is assumed to have been
the St Gothard Pass. It would have meant a long journey by barge along the Danube,
entering from one of its tributaries in Germany, perhaps the one near Augsburg. We
know that Oxford was in Strasburg in early April 1575, possibly in Augsburg afterwards
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and in Venice by mid-May. It seems unlikely, given these dates, that he would have
gone so far east as Vienna, and then travelled westwards again to the St Gothard Pass
(unless he took the easier St Brenner Pass). However, we can state two good reasons
for him to have been interested enough to visit Vienna: one would be as a follow-up
visit from an English courtier to Maximilian II (whom Roger North had invested with
the Garter in 1568); the other would be to visit the Italian polymath, Jacopo Strada.
Both reasons would have made him welcome there.
Philip Johnson’s Oxfordian essay showed that there are good reasons for believing
that France in the early 1580s was in the author’s mind when writing Measure for
Measure6, and yet the play is not set in Paris or Lyons. Johnson’s research was largely
based on parallels to names and events in the France of Henri III, whom we know
Oxford met on the occasion of Henri’s wedding in 1575. Henri III succeeded his
brother Charles IX who died in 1574. Charles’s marriage to Elisabeth of Austria in
1570, connected the royal family of France with the archdukedoms of Austria.
Elisabeth (1554-1592) was the daughter of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, King
of Bohemia from 1562 and King of Hungary from 1563. It is these connections, I
suggest, that were somehow thrown into the melting pot in the writing of Measure for
Measure, and which would date the play’s original to about 1583-84.
Overall, the play’s features of an absent ruler (disguised as a monk), of deputised
rule, of sexual purity opposed to sexual immorality, of increased severity of law
(particularly over sexual matters), give it an almost paranoid atmosphere that echoes
several elements of the Counter Reformation, the Catholic Hapsburgs’ drive to oppose
the spread of Protestantism in Europe. Firstly, the Hapsburgs ruled such vast areas of
land in Austria, Bohemia and Hungary that localised deputy rule (by the emperor’s
nephews or brothers) was the norm. Secondly, active religious commitment was a
component ideal of Hapsburg womanhood, in which they acted as charitable
counterparts to the severity of the ruler.7 The importance of regulations regarding
sexual behaviour in the Counter Reformation has also been noted by scholars of the
period.8 The play’s torrid ambience, in both serious main plot and comic subplot, has
been recently referred to as containing a ‘brothel-haunting sexuality’ and ‘the demonic
corruptibility of desire’.9
The emphasis in the sub-plot on the Vienna suburbs and prostitution is ambiguous.
This would seem to relate more appropriately to London, and its comic dimension is
certainly that of the familiar Shakespearean English lower class and the characters bear
English names. But the only record of a statute to demolish brothels belongs to the
1540s, and Henry VIII’s proclamation was in any case unsuccessful. In Vienna,
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however, the suburbs were where the Protestants lived, having been allowed to dwell
outside the city walls by the tolerant Maxmilian II. This fact sets up a moral axis in the
play between Catholic city and Protestant suburbs, in which the severe authority of the
former is depicted as a stick to beat the laxity of the latter with. The forthright
immoralities of the comic sub-plot would be wholly acceptable to a non-Puritan but
Protestant Elizabethan audience. Conversely, the same audience would have regarded
the potential immoralities of the main plot as revealing only the hypocrisy and
deception of European Catholicism. This point has not been noticed in Stratfordian
discussions of the play.
Although the word ‘precise’, associated with English Puritanism, appears several
times in the play, the Viennese setting would suppose in the audience’s mind that
Catholicism was the play’s state religion, and also that the severer aspects of its
government reflected the ideas of the Jesuits, who had their own churches in Vienna
and were raising their status in Austria (the universities of Graz and of Innsbruck were
founded on the Jesuit colleges of the 1570s and ‘80s). At the same time, the Jesuits were
attempting to infiltrate English culture via espionage. Measure for Measure, therefore, may
have reflected a deeply ironic and timely religious critique in the 1580s - Philip II of
Spain was the son of a Hapsburg emperor, after all – with fears that a Spanish invasion
of England would topple Elizabeth I. The same is true of 1604, when the position of
James I on the Catholics was ambiguous and, after the Peace Treaty with Spain, he was
being approached for more toleration.
Rulers ‘disguised’ as monks
Shakespeare altered the original plot significantly, changing husband and wife to
brother and sister, and making her a novitiate nun. This considerably raised the play’s
intensity as regards the morality issues. The major addition was to have the ruler absent
himself by disguise, comment on the morals of his city and, indeed, becoming the
catalyst for the ensuing plot. In reality, there were rulers who absented themselves, and
there were rulers who went among their people in disguise from time to time.
As Johnson’s essay observes, Henri III was sometimes given to religious fervour,
dressing or behaving like a monk.10 His brother Charles IX did the same, and several of
the Hapsburg rulers were also known to have displayed this trait. The Holy Roman
Emperor, Charles V (1500-1558) eventually abdicated all his thrones and retired to
spend his last years in a Spanish monastery. Rudolf II (1552-1612), the brother of
Elisabeth of Austria, removed his court from Vienna to Prague in 1583 to establish an
isolated court more interested in occultism than in politics, and where John Dee visited
him in 1583-84. The absent Rudolf left the governing of Vienna to his brother
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Archduke Ernst. In both cases, such retirement necessitated temporary rule by ‘cadet
princes’, brought partition to the empire, changes in the relations between the countries
of Europe, revolts that offered opportunities to the rivals of the Hapsburgs, and
international religious enmity.11
Charles IX’s bride, the beautiful Elisabeth (Ysabel) of Austria, was born in Vienna
and, at the age of sixteen in January 1571, made her official entry into Paris. Just before
her grand entry into the city, she fell ill with bronchitis at the Chateau of Madrid in the
Bois du Boulogne and was nursed by Charles and his mother, Catherine de Medici. To
amuse her Charles ordered clowns and dancers to entertain her. When she had
recovered, Charles and his sisters decided to have some fun among the Parisian crowds.
Disguised as common bourgeois they set out for the fair at St Germain. Charles went as a
coachman wearing a large hat to hide his face and, recognising one of his courtiers in
the street, gave the fellow a lash with his whip. The man was about to strike him back
when Charles removed his hat to reveal himself. Having enjoyed this rough joke, he
went again to the fair, this time borrowing the robes of a Carmelite monk and leading a
procession of friends similarly dressed.12 This sacrilegious behaviour, as well as the
generally licentious tenor of the French court, must have scandalised the pious
Elisabeth of Austria. Could Oxford have learnt about this escapade when he was at the
French court in 1575? It is echoed in the disguise that ‘Duke Vincentio’ assumes in
Measure for Measure.
Elisabeth of Austria
(Archduchess Ysabel of
Hapsburg) 1554-1592
Founder of the Convent of Poor
Clares in Vienna
The marriage of Elisabeth to Charles was short and unhappy for her, since Charles
preferred the company of his mistress. She was pregnant during the horrors of the St
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Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in August 1572 and in October gave birth to a daughter,
Marie-Isabelle, who would die in Paris in 1578. When Charles IX died in August 1574,
Catherine de Medici at first tried to persuade her to marry her next son, now Henri III,
who had been made (briefly) King of Poland. This she refused and returned to Vienna,
where her brother Archduke Ernest (1553-1595) was the Hapsburg regent. She never
remarried but went on to develop her own connections and religious influence,
eventually establishing the Convent of Poor Clares, Mary Queen of Angels, on land she
had bought near Stallburg in Vienna, the Klarissinnenkloster Maria Königin der Engel, also
known as the Queen’s Monastery. Henceforth, she devoted her life to acts of piety,
poor relief and health care. The convent church was consecrated on 2 August 1583.
The community was a strictly sequestered contemplative order of women dedicated to
celibacy. This historical fact is overlookedin Stratfordian discussions of the play.
There are several possible sources for Shakespeare’s choice of the name ‘Isabella’.
The most obvious one is Saint Isabella of France (1225-1270), the wife of Louis VIII
and Blanche of Castille, after whom the ‘Isabella Rule’ of the order of Saint Clare was
named. A statue of her was carved on the church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, near
the Louvre in Paris. Two other contemporary possibilities are Isabella Clara Eugenia
(1566-1633), who married Archduke Albert of Austria, ruler of the Spanish
Netherlands. She was the daughter of Philip II of Spain and Elizabeth of Valois. Her
paternal grandparents were the Emperor Charles V and Isabella of Portugal, and her
maternal grandparents were Henri II and Catherine de Medici. Another, mentioned
above, is Elizabeth of Austria who founded the convent in Vienna and who Germanspeaking scholars refer to as ‘Ysabel of Hapsburg, Archduchess of Austria’. The name
Elisabeth was equivalent to the eastern European ‘Alzbeta’ and ‘Ysabel’ and to the
Italian ‘Isabella’.13
If, as Johnson suggests, the author of Measure for Measure had indeed had France of
the 1580s in mind, then it seems probable that Charles IX’s Viennese widow may have
especially come to mind as an analogy to ‘Isabella’ - she who ‘wishes a more strict
restraint / Upon the sisterhood, the votaries of Saint Clare’ (Act I, sc. iv). From an
Oxfordian point of view, the choice of name could have arisen from Oxford’s known
meetings and talks with the French royal family in 1575, and later knowledge of Charles
IX’s widow’s return to Vienna. Obviously in Measure for Measure the parallel with
Elisabeth/Ysabel of Austria ends with her name and the name of her convent. On the
other hand, the name matches that of Whetstone’s narrator in Promus and Cassandra.
The choice could be a simple transference, or an associative mixture of all of the above.
Braun and Hogenberg’s view of Vienna shows the main city gate opposite the Danube,
where ships are docking. In front of the gate is a large crescent-shaped public space.
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Braun and Hogenberg’s view of Vienna (1617)
Locations in Measure for Measure compared with those in C16 Vienna:
Duke’s palace
Hofburg (Michaelerplatz, 1010 Vienna)
Angelo’s house,
gardens and gates
Schloss Neugebade, its gardens and plantations (Simmering,
1110 Vienna)
vineyard
plantation at Schloss Neugebad;
cf. Oxford’s vineyard at Wivenhoe, Essex
Convent of Saint
Clare
Klarissinenkloster Maria Königin der Engel (Josefplatz 5, 1010
Vienna ); a convent of Clares existed in London, but was
dissolved c.1536
Monastery
One of many. After the first Turkish siege of 1529, the
Hapsburgs and the Catholic church built a veritable spate of
monasteries in Vienna. There were no monasteries in
London at the time Shakespeare was writing and their sites
had been used for housing since the mid-1530s.
St Luke’s church
There were several churches, but St Luke’s is not identified
on Braun & Hogenberg’s map.
Was ‘Shakespeare’ thinking of St Luke’s in Verona?
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Moated grange
A ‘grange’ was a complex of farms and barns belonging to a
monastery, particularly of the Cistercian order, whose
economy was based on farming and viticulture. There was a
12th century Cistercian monastery in the Vienna Woods, the
Stift Heiligenkreutz, which survives today and is still active as a
monastery. cf. Bilton Grange on Oxford’s land at Bilton
Hall, Warwickshire, originally belonging to Pipewell Abbey
(Cistercian).
Prison
Yes, but not specifically identified
City walls
Yes.
City gate
Yes. There were several, but not specifically identified
Public place near city
gate
Yes, but not specifically identified *
Suburbs
Yes, where Protestants were allowed to live, cf. communities
in Measure for Measure
Consecrated fount
Yes. This suggests knowledge of the thermal springs used
since Roman times. There were several to the south of the
city, and in 2010 they were developed into a contemporary
spa complex, the Therme Wien (Kurbadstrasse 14, 1100
Vienna). The springs and wells were almost certainly
Christianised as holy wells and therefore ‘consecrated’. In
the 16th century they were outside the city; a league is 2-3
miles. In the play, Vincentio arranges to meet Angelo there
to effect his supposed re-entry into Vienna. If Schloss
Neugebade is regarded as Angelo’s house, he would have had
a short journey to the ‘fount’, from where he and the Duke
would journey northwards toward the city gates. This may
suggest a surreptitious entry at a ‘back gate’ in the south,
pointing up the Duke’s pretense of absence. If he had really
been in Poland, he would have re-entered via the Danube at
the north gate. There were also two sculptured fountains
near the Tiefer Graben, one dating from c.1455 and one built
c.1561.
a league below the
city
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Though only one location is specified (the Convent of Saint Clare), others are
largely generic (e.g. city walls and gates); all but one (St Luke’s church) of the twelve
locations in Measure for Measure can be associated with the topography of Vienna in
1583.
Conclusion
From an Oxfordian point of view, we can be certain that the author of Measure for
Measure was aware of the story as it appeared in Cinthio’s Italian and in Whetstone’s
English, and quite possibly aware of other versions in Latin, Italian and French. The
Vienna setting matches Whetstone’s classical Vienna (‘Julio’) and may suggest an
awareness that the basic story was circulating in Vienna some years before Cinthio used
it. The story seems to have originated in Italy, spread to Vienna, and then into France
and England. It seems likely that Oxford knew of it by 1575 or earlier. If this was the
case, his knowledge of the basic plot may have pre-dated Whetstone’s English version of
1578. Oxford returned from Italy in 1576 and, already acquainted with the group of
English soldier-poets (Whetstone, Gascoigne, Churchyard), it is possible that
Whetstone got the idea of writing his English version of the tale from Oxford, and not
that ‘Shakespeare’ got it from Whetstone, as in the orthodox scholarly narrative. In
Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays (1930) Eva Turner Clark quoted the editor of the
‘Irving Shakespeare’ on this point:
Shakespeare was not indebted to Whetstone for a single thought, not for a
casual expression, excepting as far as similarity of situation may be said to have
necessarily occasioned corresponding states of feeling and employment of
language. (Hidden Allusions. ed. Ruth Lloyd Miller, 1974, p.450)
In addition, through his friendship with Roger North and as a courtier, Oxford
would have been aware of the political and cultural situation in Vienna under
Maximilian II and later under Archduke Ernst and Elizabeth of Austria (whom North
had met in Paris in October 1574 to convey condolences on her husband’s death).
As with other Shakespeare plays, Measure for Measure had multiple sources, both
printed ones and those that circulated verbally with variants of names and places. The
playwright’s dramatic imagination enabled him to select what he needed from his
sources, to alter locations and names as he felt fit, and to enhance the basic plot by
changes and additions, producing from all these ingredients his own original drama for
the stage. Shakespeare’s ‘Vienna’, then, is not a vacuum but perhaps a mixture of Italy,
Austria, England (in the characters and names of the secondary plot), and perhaps
France. In the same way, Twelfth Night is not a vacuum but a mixture of Italy, the
Adriatic coast and England. As Monica Matei-Chesnoiu has noted:
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Shakespeare fused classical tradition, names, places, in a way of his own; he
displaced them from their points of origin, collated several such stories in a
single powerful visual metaphor, and transported it into a new space, the stage,
where such scenes could not be shown directly. 14
We might add that he fused, displaced and collated time-scales as well. As we explore
the plays set elsewhere in Europe, we may find that they show such multiple fusions,
displacements and collations, and that (as Roe has shown) only the plays set in Italy
possess a very exact and precise topography. This, in itself, is significant.
Notes
1 The content of this section is derived from the article by L.L.K. in Notes and Queries
(1893), series viii, vol. iv, pp.83-84 (1893) - available at Wikisource, and as cited by
W. W. Lawrence in Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies, Penguin Shakespeare Library,
Penguin (1969), pp. 86-88; see also J. W. Lever (ed), Measure for Measure, The Arden
Shakespeare (1965, 2008), pp. xxxv-xxxvi
2 Imlay, Elizabeth: ‘The Earl of Oxford’s Manor in Wivenhoe”, DVS Newsletter, April
2006; Cole, J. ‘Oxford’s Land Sales, Castle Hedingham and the Sheepcote in As You
Like It ‘, unpublished essay
3. The comments of Fynes Moryson and William Lithgow are from Penrose, B. Urbane
Travellers, Univ. of Pennsylvania Press (1942), p.14 and p.140
4. Magri, Noemi: ‘Hamlet’s “The Murder of Gonzago” in contemporary documents’ in
Such Fruits out of Italy (reprinted from DVS Newsletter, June 2009).
5. Roberts, C: ‘The Politics of Persuasion: Measure for Measure and Cinthio's
Hecatommithi.’ Early Modern Literary Studies 7.3 (January, 2002): 2.1-17 (essay online);
see also Taylor (2004).
6. Johnson, P. ‘Measure for Measure and the French Connection’ in Great Oxford: Essays on
the Life and Work of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, 1550-1604, Parapress (2004),
pp.196-200
7. For the social and political ideals of the Hapsburgs at this period see
www.habsburger.net, especially ‘The Age of Confessional Division, 1526-1648’
8. Patrouch, J.F. Sexualität und Herrschaft: sexuelles fehlverhalten in Strafprozessen vor drei
grundherrlichen gerichten Oberösterreichs, cited in Patrouch, J.F. A Queen’s Piety:Elisabeth of
Hapsburg and the Veneration of Saints, Florida International University (essay online).
9. Fernie, E. ‘To sin in loving virtue’: desire and possession in Measure for Measure’ in
Sillages Critiques, 15 (January 2013) – essay online
10. Johnson, P., op.cit., p.197
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11. Gunn, S.: ‘War, Religion and the State’ in Early Modern Europe: an Oxford History, ed.
Euan Cameron, Oxford UP (1999), pbk. 2001, p.110
12. Frieda, L.: Catherine de Medici, Phoenix (2003), p.264
13. Elisabeth of Austria left Paris for Vienna in the first week of August 1575 and
therefore Oxford could have met her at the French court in Paris during FebruaryMarch of the same year – Freer, M.W. Henri III, King of France and Poland (1888),
vol.2 p.40. For Elizabeth known as Ysabel see Patrouch, J.F. A Woman’s Space: rule,
place and Ysabel of Hapsburg, 1570-1592, Florida International University (essay
online).
14. Matei-Chesnoiu, M: Early Modern Drama and the Eastern European Elsewhere:
representations of liminal locality in Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Associated
University Press (2009), p.25
Bibliography
Draudt, M. “Between Topographical Fact and Cliché: Vienna and Austria in
Shakespeare and other English Renaissance Writing”, Shakespeare et l’Europe de la
Renaissance. Yves Peyré and Pierre Kapitaniak (eds), 2005, pp. 95-115.
Gurr, A. “Livery, Liberty and the Original Staging of Measure for Measure”, La Clé de
Langues, Feb 2013 - In this article, Stratfordian theatre historian, Andrew Gurr,
relates Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Poor Clares to the pre-Reformation order
that was resident at the Minories convent in the parish of St Aldgate Without,
London. However, this convent had been dissolved since 1539.
Kamps, I. & Raber, K. (eds). Measure for Measure: Texts and Contexts, Bedford/St
Martin’s (Boston), 2004 - The editors cite passages from News from Rome,Venice and
Vienna, Touching the Present Proceedings of the Turks against the Christians in Austria,
Hungary and Helvetia (1595). However, these do not seem to be relevant to the play.
Sjögren, G. “The Setting of Measure for Measure”, Revue de Littérature Comparée 35 (1961)
pp 25-39.
Taylor, G. “Shakespeare’s Mediterranean Measure for Measure” in Clayton, T. et al (eds),
Shakespeare and the Mediterranean: Selected Proceedings of the International Shakespeare
Association World Congress, Valencia, 2001, Univ. of Delaware Press (2004), pp.243269 This essay argues that the play was originally set in Ferarra and that Thomas
Middleton was responsible for changing the setting to Vienna.
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July 2015
Orthodoxfordians
Richard Malim, the Honourable Secretary of the De Vere Society has formed a
Facebook group, called Orthodoxfordians. There are now 120 or more members, many
of the great and good from both sides of the Atlantic. Do join !
William Shakspere was a successful
businessman and minor actor from
Stratford-upon-Avon, but was he
William Shakespeare, one of the
greatest writers of all time, or was it a
case of identity theft?
This book is a must-read for
everyone interested in the Authorship
Question, it provides a detailed
examination and collation of the
evidence surrounding it. Tony Pointon
here brings a new eye to the evidence,
concluding much that was claimed was
at best suspect, at worst invented. He
points to a resolution to the problem
as to the real identity of the author
behind the pseudonym.
This explosive and hilarious new salvo in
the hard-fought war over the identity of
William Shakespeare exposes the
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, a
registered charity from Stratford-uponAvon, as a prime source of
misinformation and subversion
concerning the life and times of the
World’s greatest playwright.
Alexander Waugh, accuses the Trust
of “making false statements” about its
tourist museums, of concealing
information about Shakespeare
authorship, and of abusing those who
challenge or contradict its “expert
authority” and its representation of
Shakespearean history.
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July 2015
Lecture on Shakespeare Authorship Question
Kevin Gilvary reports on Dr Ian Mortimer’s contribution to the SAQ
Ian Mortimer’s lecture is available on Kindle from Amazon:
The Shakespeare Authorship Debate and Historical Responsibility: The text of a lecture delivered in
the Chapter House of Exeter Cathedral on Thursday 23 April 2015
Exeter Cathedral provided the magnificent backdrop for an eagerly-awaited lecture
on The Shakespeare Authorship Question which took place on Thursday 23rd April
2015. Dr. Ian Mortimer (author of the bestselling Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval
England) presented his new paper ‘The Shakespeare Authorship Debate and Historical
Responsibility’. The publicity for the event raised some suitable questions:

Did he write the plays and poems that bear his name – or were they the work of
another Renaissance genius, such as Marlowe or Bacon?

Or was it the earl of Oxford?

Or a whole committee of intellectuals?

Why is there so much doubt when F1 clearly has his name on the cover?
The pre-event publicity continued by noting a “more perplexing” question as to
why “neither camp use[s] the sort of analysis that professional historians are able to
apply to the question”. It was stated “when it comes to Shakespeare, everybody – from
literary scholars to amateur sleuths – feels he or she can proceed without professional
historical input . . . regardless of their training, expertise or knowledge.”
There was a certain uneasiness beforehand that a “professional” historian could
claim that William of Stratford “died on 23 April”. The only relevant record occurs in
the Register of Burials for Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, which states that
he was buried on 25 April 1616. It is clearly a reckless assumption even before taking
into account that this date was based on the Julian Calendar which would equate to 5
May in the Gregorian Calendar in use today. Perhaps our “professional” historian had
acquired “specialist knowledge” by recently discovering a contemporary document
stating the date of his death. But no, he hadn’t. Furthermore, the event was billed as
taking place on the “accepted” date of his birth - another assumption: the baptism of
“Gullielmus filius Johanis Shakspere” was recorded on 26 April. It was not until the
nineteenth century that anyone suggested or decided that he died or was born on St.
George’s Day, 23 April, in keeping with Shakespeare’s recently established status as the
“god of our idolatry”.
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Exeter Cathedral
At the event, the speaker did not refer to many documents, but mainly to various
claims asserted in Shakespeare Beyond Doubt. It was clear that he had not read or
assimilated any of the weaknesses in the Stratfordian case from Shakespeare Beyond
Doubt? or any other quarter. Moreover, one would expect a respectable historian at
least to consult transcriptions of primary records as contained in Sir Edmund
Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems (1930). Eventually, our
dedicated historian will want to consult the records themselves. Sadly for the audience,
Dr. Ian Mortimer appears to have done none of these things.
Exeter Cathedral are to be congratulated on staging the event, which was an
advance in that a HISTORIAN is weighing in, feels compelled to weigh in, and he was
thanked for this. The Authorship Question was at least acknowledged, in a quite
civilised way, and with some discussion.
Dr Mortimer was courteous and engaging as were the members of the audience
who posited a contrary position. We hope he comes to reassess his own preconceptions and to engage in wider-reading, especially with regard to contemporary
documents. In the end, he declined an invitation from a gentleman in the audience who
asked whether he would take part in a debate with Alexander Waugh.
By the end of the session, some of the audience were distinctly wobbly!
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Richard Malim comments on a u-turn by the editors of Memoria di
Shakespeare, who retracted their earlier acceptance of a paper by an Oxfordian
academic.
Here is the Report from the Times Higher Educational Supplement (11 September 2014)
Shakespeare scholar disputes decision-reversal by journal
A major spat has broken out within the world of Shakespeare studies. In January
this year [2014], the editors of the Italian journal Memoria di Shakespeare asked Richard
Waugaman to revise his paper titled “The psychology of Shakespearean biography”,
which they described as “absolutely pertinent” to a 2015 issue on Shakespeare’s
biography.
A clinical professor of psychiatry and “faculty expert on Shakespeare” at
Georgetown University in Washington DC, Professor Waugaman is also an
“Oxfordian”, believing there is evidence that the poems and plays were written not by
“the man from Stratford” but by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
His paper, he explains, examines this case but also explores “the conscious and
unconscious psychological factors behind the taboo against openly discussing the
authorship question”, citing examples from the history of science “where new
discoveries that ultimately lead to paradigm shifts are often bitterly opposed by
adherents of traditional theories”. All seemed to be proceeding to publication and the
parties had reached the stage of discussing minor editorial details when, on 17 August,
Professor Waugaman received an email from Rosy Colombo, senior professor of
English at the Sapienza University of Rome.
The email, seen by Times Higher Education, explained that the previous editors of
Memoria di Shakespeare had stepped down and that she and her new fellow editor, Gary
Taylor – distinguished research professor at Florida State University – had “decided
against publishing an article that has come out already”. Professor Waugaman
responded that it seemed like “a breach of good faith with contributors” for “an article
that was invited by a journal’s co-editors, be rejected by the next co-editors”.
This generated an almost immediate reply from Professor Taylor, saying that his
agreement to take over as co-editor had been “conditional on rejection of certain
contributions, like yours, which seem to me profoundly unscholarly, and which would
have the effect of undermining the credibility and status of other contributions to the
volume. I simply find your reasoning, and your evidence, as unconvincing as those of
Holocaust deniers, and other conspiracy theorists,” he added.
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Answering with biting sarcasm, Professor Waugaman noted that he could “only
assume your emotions have over-ridden your common decency. I know one fellow
Oxfordian who lost more than 70 relatives in the Holocaust, and he finds that
comparison especially disgusting.”
Asked to comment on Professor Waugaman’s claims, Professor Colombo told
THE that “it is not at all unusual for editors and publishers to reject something after it
has been written, or even revised… Until you have a contract signed by both parties, it
is entirely acceptable for the publisher/editor (of a book or a journal) to change their
minds.”
Professor Taylor, meanwhile, reiterated his belief that “work like Waugaman’s is
fundamentally unscholarly, irrational and illogical. I compared it to the work of
Holocaust-deniers not because the damage to Shakespeare is comparable to the damage
to the millions of people killed by the Nazis, but because Waugaman’s work depends
upon the same kind of conspiratorial claims. You cannot reason with such claims,
because they dismiss empirical evidence as just another conspiracy. The idea that antiStratfordian zealots are ‘censored’ is ridiculous.”
Richard Malim comments:
Professor Waugaman in September 2014 crossed swords with Professor Gary
Taylor because Waugaman’s Oxfordian article for an Italian publication was at first
accepted and then rejected when it was vetted by the new co-editor Taylor: he states he
had accepted his appointment as editor “conditional on rejection of certain
contributions which seem to me to be profoundly unscholarly.”
So Taylor claims the high ground on the basis of scholarship in any discussion of
the chronology of Shakespeare’s plays. The most consistent critic (from an ‘orthodox’
angle accepting William Shakespeare 1564-1616 as the author) of the ultra-orthodox
position of adherence to the Malone-Chambers thesis for a “late start” for
Shakespeare’s playwriting career was the late Professor Honigmann, who writes:
I am struck first of all by Shakespeare’s age. By 1590 he would have been
twenty-six. All the surviving evidence suggests that he was a remarkably fluent
writer….; and fluent writers usually discover their talent early, and start young.
Is it really conceivable that he remained unaware of his special gift till he was
twenty-six [in Elizabethan terms by no means in the first flush of youth –
RM]?........Could it be that he looked upon the plays written before 1590 as
juvenilia and best forgotten? That is possible; but biographers and critics have
long been agreed that the early histories and comedies, together with Titus
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July 2015
Andronicus, should be seen as ‘apprentice work’. If they are right we need not
postulate earlier, lost plays. Are we to suppose then that a dramatist who wrote
with such extraordinary “easinesse”…. composed his juvenilia in his late
twenties? It seems inherently unlikely. How is it, in that case, that the ‘late start’
chronology still survives ?”
Honigmann’s answer is that no-one can now devote the twenty or so years that
Chambers gave to his volumes to re-assessing the evidence in its entirety. It is easy for
the ‘orthodox’ late-start chronologist to pick off the argument of the odd scholar who
suggests an earlier date for this or that play without consideration of any all-embracing
survey like the one now provided by Kevin Gilvary and his team. Indeed Chambers
himself was forced to abandon his own contention in regard to the dating of 3 Henry
VI and fudged the issue by putting his start-date back from 1592 arbitrarily to 1590.
In 1987 five years later, Taylor contributed an essay “The Canon and Chronology
of Shakespeare’s Plays” to William Shakespeare – A Textual Companion. He ducks the
‘juvenilia/ age’ point completely. He tackles the examples given by Honigmann to
suggest that some plays were written earlier in a perfectly acceptable manner, but then
goes on to say:
Curiosity [NB it was not “curiosity” but “Nature” according to Galileo. RM]
abhors a vacuum, and the urge to push Shakespeare’s first play farther and
farther back into the 1580s is palpably [casting doubt on Honigmann’s
scholarship motive ? RM] designed to fill the black hole of our ignorance about
those years; but since we must spread the same number of plays over a larger
number of years, by filling one big gap in the 1580s we simply create other
vacuums elsewhere….It seems to us Greene’s [“upstart crow” etc. ] attack stings
with the bitterness of recent rivalry from an unexpected quarter. Such
impressions hardly constitute ‘evidence’, and we offer these prejudices of our
own only as viable alternatives to the prejudices of others.”
In other words they are of no more evidential reliability than Honigmann’s actual
thesis, and Honigmann had already taken on board that criticism/prejudice. In
Reinventing Shakespeare, Taylor writes “If the first plays are moved back to the 1580s,
those of the middle period are also affected, and about half the canon must be
redated.” It does appear therefore that the approach of both Honigmann and Taylor is
defective in scholarship terms. While Taylor seems to be a rock-hard supporter of
Malone/Chambers ‘late start’ chronology and with it the modern fantasies/ fallacies of
collaboration and stylometricism on which they have to be based, he was more helpful
when he put his finger on the basic weakness of any ‘orthodox’ dating scheme, when he
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wrote on Revisionism, the [obviously correct] theory that the play texts did not spring
up on a certain as a one-off completed instant masterpiece but were moulded by the
writer over time and as experience took him. Taylor comments:
Revisionism insists that texts are made; they become – they do not flash
instantaneously into perfect and unalterable being. Over a certain period an
author makes a text; during a later period, in response to internal or external
stimuli, that author remakes the same text, the revised version results from a
kind of posthumous collaboration between a deceased younger self and a living
older self.
. . . Fewer and fewer critics believe in closure. Shakespeare may at some
point have closed the book: but he could re-open it whenever he wanted. There
is no Last Judgment anymore.
Honigmann quotes no less than three times from F. P. Wilson, arguably the most
distinguished critic of fifty years ago, this ‘open’ verdict in Marlowe and Early Shakespeare:
“The fact is that the chronology of Shakespeare’s earliest plays is so uncertain that it has
no right to harden into an orthodoxy”. Later Wilson wrote in The English Drama “Allow
something for a pamphleteer’s inflation of his case [Gosson in Plays Confuted in Five
Actions 1582], and even so enough is left to suggest that the lost material might wholly
change our estimate of the drama of this period [i.e. Tudor Drama from 1575].”
The last word goes to Coleridge: “Although Malone had created a great many
external particulars regarding the age of each play, they were all in Coleridge’s mind
much less satisfactory than the evidence to be gained from the internal evidence.”
So where does that leave Taylor, the ally of the Shakespeare collaborationists and
stylometricists and arch-critic of “profoundly unscholarly” Oxfordian theory, which he
clearly knows nothing about, because he thinks it “depends on the same kind of
conspiratorial claims” as Holocaust denial, when there are no conspiratorial claims in
Oxfordianism (let alone need for them)? His take on the evidence is revealed as
unreliable (on his own confession), his logic as deficient (likewise) and his scholarship
as that of one who has not fully opened his mind to the contentions of the ‘orthodox’
Honigmann, as he refuses to investigate Honigmann’s thesis potential, let alone to
those of Kevin Gilvary, who carefully examined all the evidence, and, whether he
(Gilvary) intended it or not, damages the already weakened Malone/Chambers
chronology - beyond repair.
When Taylor says that the acceptance of Waugaman’s paper would cause “damage
to Shakespeare”, what on earth is he talking about? The rejection of the Stratford man
opens the door to the realisation that the true author is a man whose world cultural
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July 2015
standing buries the comparatively limited achievement put forward by the English
Literary establishment (which it keeps eating away at anyway) on behalf of their now
dramatically weakened candidate for authorship.
References
E. A. J. Honigmann: Shakespeare’s Impact on his Contemporaries (Macmillan, London 1982)
pp.54-5.
K. Gilvary (ed.): Dating Shakespeare’s Plays (Parapress, Tunbridge Wells 2010).
S. Wells et al. William Shakespeare : A Textual Companion (Norton with Oxford U.P.
reprint with corrections 1997) pp.97-8.
G. Taylor: Reinventing Shakespeare (Hogarth, London 1990) pp.359, 361
F. P. Wilson: Marlowe and the early Shakespeare (Oxford U.P. 1953) p.113
F. P. Wilson: The English Drama (Oxford U.P. 1969) p.118
S. T. Coleridge: Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and other English Poets (Bell, London
1914) p.8
Brunel University London award Doctorate to the
Chairman of the DVS
A message from the DVS vice-chairman, Dr Eddi Jolly
Everyone who's heard or read anything by our Chairman, Kevin, will know he is
pretty hot on the History plays. And on The Tempest's debt to the commedia dell'arte. Oh,
and the dating of the plays. Meanwhile, his knowledge of the sources means he can
hold his own with the likes of Prof James Shapiro in an off-the-cuff chat about
Coriolanus. What's more, he's a classicist, not even an English Literature graduate.
So when he settled into postgrad research at Brunel he had a lot of possible areas to
choose from. But rather than develop any of these, he focused on 'biographies' of W
Shakespeare, across the centuries. He examined the criteria for the necessary materials
for a biography or literary biography, and those available for WS, and found the latter
sorely wanting. Indeed, he saw the biographies of WS as 'biografiction'.
At his viva in May 2015, his examiners were in agreement. One wrote that the basic
'argument of the thesis is [so] strong and timely' that Kevin was encouraged to turn his
thesis into a book at once! So, in June 2015, he was awarded his doctorate from Brunel
University for the thesis Shakespearean Biografiction. Congratulations, Dr Gilvary!
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July 2015
Kevin Gilvary replies:
Many thanks to Eddi, not just for these kind words but for her constant advice and
encouragement throughout the process. I would also like to pay tribute to the
authorship skeptics in the U.K., Europe and in North America. Their findings and
insights over the years have greatly informed my own thinking.
I reluctantly decided that if my own thesis was to be taken seriously by mainstream
academics (i.e. 'Stratfordians') it would need for the most part to reference mainstream
scholars to show that biographies of Shakespeare are largely conjectural. Thus the title
emerged: Shakespearean Biografiction: how biographers rely on context,
conjecture and inference to construct a life of the Bard. After establishing this
position, it is then only a small step to question the attribution of the works.
My research was supervised by Professor Bill Leahy. It is the fifth authorshiprelated doctorate which he has supervised. Previous successful candidates include Eddi
Jolly (on the first two quartos of Hamlet), Barry Clarke (on Bacon) and Robyn Williams
(on Mary Sidney). Brunel University London has also awarded the honorary degree of
Doctor of Letters to Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance in recognition of their services to
acting, in 2007 and 2009 respectively.
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July 2015
Shakespeare in Italy: 14-21 June, 2016
Ann Zakelj is organising a tour for Oxfordians. The itinerary is currently planned to
include:
Padua, our base for Venice and Bassana dal Grappo
Venice (Merchant of Venice, Othello) include The Rialto, The Greek Church (San
Giorgio dei Greci), Shylock’s penthouse, Belmont/Villa Foscari, Jewish quarter – il
ghetto, Santa Maria Formosa Church.
Bassana dal Grappo (near Venice) (Othello), monkey frescos on Piazzotto del Sale.
Mantua (Rape of Lucrece, Winter’s Tale, Hamlet) is our base for Verona and
Sabbioneta. Palazzo Ducale (Appartamento di Troia fresco by Giulio Romano), Palazzo
Te (Sala dei Gianti fresco; Sala degli Stucchi; Chamber of Amor and Psyche by Giulio
Romano); Basilica di S. Andrea (Romano’s Monumento Strozzi); Santa Maria delle
Grazie (Ippolita & Castiglione’s tomb).
Verona (Romeo and Juliet, Two Gentlemen of Verona) Canals, Sycamore grove at West
wall (Porta Palio), Villafranca di Verona, Scaliger Castle, On the Piazza dei Signori, the
tomb of Bartolomeo della Scala (Escalus) in Santa Maria Antica (known as Arche
Scaligeri), Via Montecci (Montague) home, 23 Via Capello – Capulet house, former
monastery San Francesco al Corso (scene of marriage & Capulet crypt), San Pietro
Incarnario, Juliet’s parish church.
Sabbioneta (La Piccola Atena or “Little Athens”) points of interest (A Midsummer
Night’s Dream) Ducal Palace (Hall of the Horses, Sala dei Cavalli - Romano’s paintings
of horses not extant ), Porta della Vittoria (aka the Duke’s Oak), The Temple – la
Chiesa dell’ Incoronata.
Milan (Two Gentlemen of Verona) Santa Maria della Sanita in Il Lazaretto, Church of
San Gregorio, site of il Pozzo di San Gregorio (St George’s Well).
Extension
There is an extension to the tour to Florence and Siena from 21-26 June.
You can contact Ann Zakelj at [email protected]
For current details and booking, go to Pax Travel, London. www.paxtravel.co.uk
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July 2015
www.shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org
Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship: CONFERENCE
September 24-27, 2015, Ashland, Oregon, U.S.A
The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship will hold its 2015 annual conference and
membership meeting at the historic landmark Ashland Springs Hotel in Ashland,
Oregon, home of the Tony Award-winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival. From
Thursday, September 24 through Sunday, September 27 the conference will convene
daily with evening productions at the festival. Appetizers at the opening reception, two
buffet lunches, and an awards banquet are included in the program.
Conference Program
This year’s conference will feature a number of British scholars who have been
engaged very actively in the authorship debate, including Kevin Gilvary (Chairman of
the De Vere Society), Alexander Waugh (President of the Shakespeare Authorship
Coalition), Dr. Ros Barber and Julia Cleave (of the Shakespeare Authorship Trust),
and Dr. Heward Wilkinson.
In addition, Professors Roger Stritmatter, Michael Delahoyde, Don Rubin and
Wally Hurst, as well as authors Mark Anderson, Katherine Chiljan, and editor
James Warren have all proposed papers for what promises to be an outstanding
educational and theatrical program.
Theatre
One hundred tickets each for evening productions of Much Ado about Nothing
(9/24), Antony and Cleopatra (9/25), and Pericles (9/26) have been reserved for our
conference group. The discounted SOF Conference package of three tickets, one for
each play, is $100, but will be available only on a first-come-first-serve basis. Group
discounted individual play tickets may also be purchased for $40 each.
Lodging
A discounted group rate of $139/night for rooms at the Ashland Springs Hotel &
Suites is still available for conference attendees.
For additional information on registration, Oregon Shakespeare Festival tickets, or
questions regarding travel, contact Earl Showerman at [email protected].
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July 2015
The de Vere Society
Autumn Meeting at Thistle Hotel, Marble Arch, Oxford
Street, London.
Saturday 17 October 2015.
Entrance in Bryanston Street. Price: £35 including lunch
1000
Meet at Thistle Hotel, Marble Arch.. Tea / Coffee
1245
LUNCH – “and a fine meal it is too!”
1600
Refreshment Break
The de Vere Society regrets charging more than for previous meetings but it is
not possible to book a room with lunch in central London for less. Speakers to
include:Heward Wilkinson, on Hamlet and the evolution of consciousness.
Jan Cole on Oxford's Great Garden property and The Boar's Head Inn.
Alexander Waugh, (to speak in the morning) on his recent investigations.
Julia Cleave, on Shakespeare and the Visual Arts.
Charles Bird, on Discoveries at Tilbury Parish Church.
Wayne Shore, on using computers in Shakespeare Studies
Topics for discussion include: celebrating 2016; use of social media.
There will also be a full report on the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship
conference in Ashland.
As we need to finalise numbers for lunch, please confirm your firm intention to
attend: [email protected]
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July 2015 - The De Vere Society

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