Shakespeare and Oxford: 25 Curious Connections

1. Shakespeare and Oxford: 25 Curious Connections Shakespeare and Oxford25 Curious Connections Edward De Vere,17th Earl of Oxford William Shakespeare, the Writer VERSION 5.0

2. Edward De Vere17th Earl of Oxford Williamof Stratford Shakespearethe Writer The Crime and the Suspects The Crime

3. Law, Music Power, & Italy Shakespeare’s Library & Books Shakespeare’s Fellow Poets IdiosyncraticTopicalEvents Language & Accolades The Shakespeare Dedicatees Characters in Hamlet The First Step 1. What do Stratfordian Scholars say about the writer Shakespeare?

4. Law, Music Power, & Italy Shakespeare’s Library & Books Shakespeare’s Fellow Poets IdiosyncraticTopical Events Language & Accolades The Shakespeare Dedicatees Characters in Hamlet The Second Step 2. How does William of Stratford connect to these people and things?

5. Law, Music Power, & Italy Shakespeare’s Library & Books Shakespeare’s Fellow Poets Idiosyncratic TopicalEvents Language & Accolades The Shakespeare Dedicatees Characters in Hamlet The Third Step 3. What connections exist between Oxford and these people and things?

6. Characters in Hamlet Characters in Hamlet

7. Topical Characters (1937) Stratfordian John Dover Wilson in The Essential Shakespeare: “Elizabethan drama was a social institution which performed many functions…. Among other things it was, like the modern newspaper, at once the focus and the purveyor of the London gossip of the day. In a word it was topical.” (11)

8. Topical Characters (1984) Annabel Patterson in Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England: "…poetry, or literature, has had from antiquity a unique role to play in mediating to the magistrates the thoughts of the governed, and that it exists, or ought to, in a privileged position of compromise." (13) "In the plays of Ben Jonson and Philip Massinger, in Shakespeare's King Lear, in a court masque by Thomas Carew, in the sermons of John Donne, there is evidence, if we look carefully, of a highly sophisticated system of oblique communication, of unwritten rules whereby writers could communicate with readers or audiences (among whom were the very same authorities who were responsible for state censorship) without producing a direct confrontation.… One of the least oblique critics of Jacobean policy, the pamphleteer Thomas Scott, remarked in the significantly entitled Vox Regis that "sometimes Kings are content in Playes and Maskes to be admonished of divers things." (45)

9. Topical Characters (1988) Leah S. Marcus in Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Readings and Its Discontents. "Given the feckless, highly ingenious, almost ungovernable gusto with which contemporaries found parallels between stage action and contemporary events, there are few things that plays could be relied upon not to mean. In early Tudor times, plays were openly used both for official propaganda and for political agitation….During the 1560s Elizabeth herself regularly interpreted comedies presented at court as offering advice about the succession: she was to follow the "woman's part," a part she professed to dislike, and marry as the heroine inevitably did at the end. Given her ability to find ‘Abstracts of the time’ even in seemingly neutral materials. No comedy performed before her was safe from topical interpretation. Negative examples are the most prominent in the surviving records if only because censorship caused them to receive special scrutiny. So, in 1601, a sudden rash of performances of Shakespeare's Richard II was taken by Elizabeth and her chief ministers (and not without reason) as propaganda for the Essex rebellion." (27)

10. Connection One William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius (1869) Stratfordian George Russell French in Shakspeareana Genealogica: “The next important personages in the play are the ‘Lord Chamberlain,’ POLONIUS; his son, LAERTES; and daughter, OPHELIA; and these are supposed to stand for Queen Elizabeth's celebrated Lord High Treasurer, Sir WILLIAM CECIL, Lord Burleigh; his second son, ROBERT CECIL; and his daughter, ANNE CECIL.” (301)

11. Connection One William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius (1920) Stratfordian Lilian Winstanley in Hamlet and the Scottish Succession: “Polonius, throughout the play, stands isolated as the one person who does really enjoy the royal confidence; he is an old man, and no other councillor of equal rank anywhere appears. This corresponds almost precisely with the position held by Burleigh….Burleigh’s eldest son – Thomas Cecil – was a youth of very wayward life; his licentiousness and irregularity occasioned his father great distress and, during his residence in Paris, his father wrote letters to him full of wise maxims for his guidance; he also instructed friends to watch over him, and bring him reports of his son’s behaviour. So Polonius has a son – Laertes – whom he suspects of irregular life; Polonius provides that his son, when he goes to Paris, shall be carefully watched, and that reports on his behaviour shall be prepared by Reynaldo.” (114-116)

12. Connection One William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius (1930) Stratfordian E. K. Chambers in William Shakespeare: It has often been thought that Polonius may glance at Lord Burghley, who wrote Certain Preceptes, or Directions for the use of his son Robert Cecil. These were printed (1618) 'from a more perfect copie, than ordinarily those pocket manuscripts goe warranted by'. Conceivably Shakespeare knew a pocket manuscript, but Laertes is less like Robert Cecil than Burghley's elder son Thomas. (Vol. I, 418)

13. Connection One William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius (1937) Stratfordian J. Dover Wilson in The Essential Shakespeare: “It is certain then that Shakespeare did not deliberately avoid topical allusion, as those who worship the Olympian claim. And if so, may we not suspect allusion and reference in many passages where it has hitherto not been detected? We not only may but should; for once again, the essential Shakespeare will be altogether misconceived if we think of him as one who stood apart from the life of his time.” (12) “Polonius is almost without doubt intended as a caricature of Burleigh….” (104)

14. Connection One William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius (1955) Stratfordian Conyers Read in Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth: “’If you offend in forgetting God by leaving your ordinary prayers or such like, if you offend in any surfeiting of eating or drinking too much, if you offend in other ways, by attending and minding any lewd or filthy tales or enticements of lightness or wantonness of body, you must at evening bring both your thoughts and deeds as you put off your garments to lay down, and cast away those and all such like that by the devil are devised to overwhelm your soul.…’ “This is the sort of sermon which William Cecil liked to preach to young men. He preached many such in the course of his life. They reveal the strong Puritan strain in him. In this particular case we get some inkling of those weaknesses in young Thomas about which his father was most concerned. Obviously William Cecil had a very inadequate understanding of the psychology of adolescence. Even Polonius was never quite so tedious and pedantic as this.” (214)

15. Connection One William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius (1958) Stratfordian Joel Hurstfield in The Queen’s Wards, on Burghley’s wordiness: “It is the authentic voice of Polonius.” (1964) Joel Hurstfield in Shakespeare's World (written with James Sutherland): "The governing classes were both paternalistic and patronizing; and nowhere is this attitude better displayed than in the advice which that archetype of elder statesmen William Cecil, Lord Burghley – Shakespeare's Polonius – prepared for his son." (35)

16. Connection One William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius (1963) Stratfordian A.L. Rowse in William Shakespeare: A Biography: “Nor do I think we need hesitate to see reflections of old Lord Burghley in old Polonius – not only in the fact that their positions were the same in the state, the leading minister in close proximity to the sovereign, in ancient smug security.… there are certain specific references reflecting Burghley’s known characteristics.” (1966) The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare: “…many scholars have argued that that Burghley is being satirized as Polonius in Hamlet.... Polonius’ famous advice to Laertes (I, iii, 58-80) is strikingly similar to Burghley’s precepts in this treatise. Hamlet’s reference to Polonius as a ‘fishmonger’ may also be an allusion to Burghley’s attempt as treasurer to stimulate the fish trade.” (90)

17. William Cecil, Lord Burghley as Polonius Connection One Shakespeare the writer

18. Connection Two Anne Cecil as Ophelia

19. Connection Two Anne Cecil as Ophelia (1869) Stratfordian George French in Shakspeareana Genealogica: “The next important personages in the play are the ‘Lord Chamberlain,’ POLONIUS; his son, LAERTES; and daughter, OPHELIA … his daughter, ANNE CECIL.” (301) “[M]arriage was proposed by their fathers to take place between Philip Sidney and Anne Cecil, the ‘fair Ophelia’ of the play.” (302)

20. Connection Two Anne Cecil as Ophelia (1920) Stratfordian Lilian Winstanley in Hamlet and the Scottish Succession: “Intercepted letters and the employment of spies were, then, a quite conspicuous and notorious part of Cecil’s statecraft, and they are certainly made especially characteristic of Shakespeare’s Polonius. Polonius intercepts the letters from Hamlet to his daughter; he appropriates Hamlet’s most intimate correspondence, carries it to the king, and discusses it without a moment’s shame or hesitation: he and the king play the eaves­dropper during Hamlet’s interview with Ophelia: he himself spies upon Hamlet’s interview with his mother. It is impossible not to see that these things are made both futile and hateful in Polonius, and they were precisely the things that were detested in Cecil….” (122)

21. Connection Two Anne Cecil as Ophelia “Cecil, in fact, was always particularly careful not to let Elizabeth or anyone else think that ambition for his daughter could tempt him into unwise political plans. In exactly the same way we find Polonius guarding himself against any suspicion that he may have encouraged Hamlet’s advances to Ophelia. The king asks [Act II., ii.]: ‘How hath she received his love?’ and Polonius enquires, ‘What do you think of me? ‘The king replies: ‘As of a man faithful and honourable’; Polonius proceeds to explain that, such being the case, he could not possibly have encouraged the love between Hamlet and his daughter….” (124)

22. Connections One and Two Shakespeare the writer William Cecil, Lord Burghley as Polonius Anne Cecilas Ophelia

23. William of Stratford Connections One and Two ? William Cecil, Lord Burghley as Polonius Anne Cecilas Ophelia

24. Anne Cecilas Ophelia Connections One and Two William Cecil, Lord Burghley as Polonius

25. Connection One Connection to Oxford: The Earl of Oxford grew up in Lord Burghley’s household as a ward of the Crown. Oxford and Burghley were at odds until Burghley’s death. In Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth Conyers Read states: “Oxford… entered Burghley’s household as ward in 1562.” And those seeing Hamlet in Court would recognize another connection: Lord Burghley’s Latin motto was Cor unum, via una, – “One heart, one way.” Stratfordian W. W. Greg states in The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare: “In this text [Q1 of Hamlet] for some obscure reason the names Corambis and Montano were substituted for Polonius and Reynaldo.” The reason for Corambis, however, is not obscure. Corambis, the original name for Polonius,alludes to the Latin “Cor Ambo” for “double-hearted” or “of two hearts,” a clear shot at Cecil’s motto.

26. Connection Two Connection to Oxford: Anne and Oxford grew up together in Burghley’s household and were later unhappily married. The primary source for the Hamlet story is Saxo Grammaticus’s Historiae Danicae. The text, referring to the couple later represented as Hamlet and Ophelia, states: “For both of them had been under the same fostering in their childhood; and this early rearing in common had brought Amleth and the girl into great intimacy.” This mirrors Anne and Oxford. Both were raised together in their youth. Stratfordian Conyers Read in Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth: “Oxford…entered Burghley’s household as a ward in 1562, at the age of twelve.” (125)

27. Connection Two • Lilian Winstanley says, “[There] is a further curious parallel in the fact that when Cecil’s daughter married De Vere, Earl of Oxford – the husband turned sulky, separated himself from his wife, and declared that it was Cecil’s fault for influencing his wife against him.” • She then quotes Hume’s The Great Lord Burghley: • “Oxford declined to meet his wife or to hold any communication with her; Burghley reasoned, remonstrated, and besought in vain. Oxford was sulky and intractable. His wife, he said, had been influenced by her parents against him and he would have nothing more to do with her.” • Finally, Winstanley draws the parallel, “So, also, in the drama we find Polonius interfering between his daughter and her lover, we find his machinations so successful that Hamlet turns sulky, and is alienated from Ophelia for good.” (122-124)

28. William Cecil, Lord Burghley as Polonius Anne Cecilas Ophelia Connections One and Two Earl of Oxfordas Hamlet

29. Hamlet as Autobiography (1911) Stratfordian Frank Harris in The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life-Story: “Even if it be admitted that Hamlet is the most complex and profound character of Shakespeare’s creations, and therefore probably the character in which Shakespeare revealed most of himself, the question of degree remains to be determined.” (7) (1950) Stratfordian Harold C. Goddard in The Meaning of Shakespeare: “To nearly everyone both Hamlet himself and the play give the impression of having some peculiarly intimate relation to their creator.” (332)

30. Hamlet as Autobiography (1962) Hugh Trevor-Roper, “What’s in a Name?” in Réalités (English-language edition): “Shakespeare wrote another play which, it is now widely agreed, is largely autobiographical: that most bewildering, most fascinating of all his plays, Hamlet. Hamlet, the over-sensitive man, whose chameleon sympathy with all around him, whose capacity to enter into all men’s doubts and fears, enabled him to mount a brilliant play but disabled him from imposing his personality on events or leaving any personal trace in history – this is Shakespeare himself.” (43)

31. Connection to Shakspere William had a son, Hamnet, named after his neighbor, Hamnet Sadler. Some Stratfordians see Hamlet as a memorial to that son. ? William of Stratford

32. Connection Three The Earl of Oxford as Hamlet • Connection to Oxford: There are many striking parallels between Oxford and Hamlet. • The several connections already discussed demand that we acknowledge the parallels between Hamlet and Oxford: • Both were noblemen and courtiers. • Both had mothers who remarried after their father’s death. • Both were spied upon by Polonius/Burghley. • Both were patrons to players. • Both were playwrights.

33. Connection Three The Earl of Oxford as Hamlet • Both had a lover (Ophelia/Anne) whose father was the immediate counselor to the throne. • Both had a lover (Ophelia/Anne) accused of infidelity. • Both had a lover (Ophelia/Anne) who dies untimely. • Both had been thought somewhat mad by others in Court.

34. Connection Three The Earl of Oxford as Hamlet If Polonius is Burghley, and there is compelling reason to think that people at that time would have easily recognized him as such, then the further parallels between Laertes and Ophelia and Burghley’s offspring cement the identification, and compel us to look at who would then be Hamlet. Despite attempts to identify Hamlet as Philip Sidney or Essex (neither mistreated Anne nor had intimate relations with her), Oxford is clearly the reasonable, indeed the natural, candidate. Once the number of parallels between Hamlet and Oxford are identified – some highly unusual – then the identification is compelling. Only those who have professional or private concerns with that identification have reason to argue against it.

35. Idiosyncratic TopicalEvents Characters in Hamlet Idiosyncratic Topical Events

36. Connection Four Bed Trick Episode In All’s Well That Ends Well Bertram arrives at Diana’s bed, not knowing that he is in reality sleeping with Helena. Connection to Oxford: G.K. Hunter, ed. of the Arden All’s Well That Ends Well : “Fripp [in Shakespeare Man and Artist (1938) II, 601] gives a reference to Osborne’s Memoires and here we seem to find a roughly contemporary attitude to the same trick in real life. Osborne writes of …the last great Earle of Oxford, whose Lady was bought to his bed under the notion of his Mistris, and from such a virtuous deceit she [sc. Pembroke’s wife] is said to proceed (1658 ed., p. 79) This is a close parallel from the court-life of Shakespeare’s time, and it shows only moral admiration for the trick.” (xliv)

37. Connection Five Attacked by Pirates while Bound for England Hamlet Act IV, Scene vii, 14-18 Hor. (reads the letter) … Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and in the grapple I boarded them. Connection to Oxford: Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth: “[Oxford] started home, apparently in a fine rage, which was not alleviated by the fact that his ship was intercepted by pirates and he was stripped to his shirt.” (133)

38. Connection Six Gad’s Hill Episode Henry IV, Part 1, Act I, Scene 2, 120-138: Poins. But my lads, my lads, tomorrow morning, by four o’clock early at Gad’s Hill! There are pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses. I have vizards for you all; you have horses for yourselves; Gadshill lies tonight in Rochester; I have bespoke supper tomorrow night in Eastcheap: we may do it as secure as sleep. If you will go, I will stuff your purses full of crowns; if you will not, tarry At home and be hanged. Henry IV, Part 1, Act II, Scene 2, 51-53: Bardolph. Case ye, case ye, on with your vizards! There’s money of the king’s coming down the hill; ‘tis going to the king’s exchequer.

39. Connection Six Gad’s Hill Episode Connection to Oxford: In 1573 Oxford’s men, when the Earl was a young man like Prince Hal, conducted a similar prank in the same location. Gad’s Hill is located in Kent on the highway between Rochester and Gravesend. Letter to Lord Burghley dated May 1573 by William Fawnt and John Wotton, former associates of Oxford: “…Wootton and my­self riding peaceably by the highway from Gravesend to Rochester, had three calivers charged with bullets, discharged at us by three of Lord Oxford’s men…who lay privily in a ditch awaiting our coming with full intent to murder us.…” From the details given in the letter there is little doubt that the Gad’s Hill episode in the drama is based directly upon the actual prank: the men were patently travelling on business connected with the Exchequer, hence their appeal to the Lord Treasurer Burghley.

40. Connection to Shakspere Topical connections? Uh…. ? William of Stratford

41. Shakespeare’s Library & Books Idiosyncratic TopicalEvents Characters in Hamlet Shakespeare’s Library & Books

42. Connection Seven Shakespeare’s Library (1904) Stratfordian H.R.D. Anders in Shakespeare’s Books: “[W]e now may safely assert, that Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Latin language was considerable, and that he must have read some of the more important Latin authors.” (39) (1933) E.K. Chambers in A Short Life of Shakespeare: “There has been…much enumeration of the books, ancient and modern, erudite and popular, which may, directly or indirectly, have contributed to his plays….One may reasonably assume that at all times Shakespeare read whatever books, original or translated, came in his way.” (21) (1947) Stratfordian Sister Miriam Joseph in Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language: “[He] utilized every resource of thought and language known to his time.” (4)

43. Connection Seven Shakespeare’s Library (1962) Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘What’s in a Name?’ in Réalités (English-language edition): “No scholar today would see Shakespeare as a mere ‘child of nature.’ On the contrary, we realize that he was highly educated, even erudite. It is true, he does not parade his learning. He wears no heavy carapace of classical or Biblical or philosophical scholarship, like Donne or Milton. But he is clearly familiar, in an easy and assured manner, with the wide learning of his time and had the general intellectual formation of a cultivated man of the Renaissance.” (42) (1986) Stratfordian Aubrey Kail in The Medical Mind of Shakespeare: “Shakespeare’s plays bear witness to a profound knowledge of contemporary physiology and psychology, and he employed medical terms in a manner which would have been beyond the powers of an ordinary playwright or physician.” (14)

44. Connection to Shakspere Shakespeare’s Library ? No known connection. No evidence exists that William had a library, nor did he leave books in his will as others have done, in an age where books were so valuable they were chained to desks. Stratfordians suggest that William borrowed printer’s copies of books from publisher Richard Field while living in London, but there is no suggestion that he had access to such books in Stratford. William of Stratford

45. Connection Seven Shakespeare’s Library Connection to Oxford: Cecil House held one of the finest libraries in England, which Oxford took advantage of in his youth. Martin Hume in The Great Lord Burghley: “[Cecil] was an insatiable book buyer and collector of heraldic and genealogical manuscripts. Sir William Pickering in Paris, and Sir John Mason, had orders to buy for him all the attractive new books published in France; and Chamberlain in Brussels had a similar commission….[T]he Hatfield Papers contain very numerous memoranda of books and genealogies bought by Cecil.” (48) Conyers Read in Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth: “Without doubt Burghley took a great interest in the education of promising young Englishmen. His household indeed was currently regarded as the best training school for the gentry in England.” (124-5)

46. Connection Seven Shakespeare’s Library A.L. Rowse in Eminent Elizabethans: “As a royal ward [Oxford] was taken into that school of virtue, Cecil House in the Strand…. Here, under the surveyance of the great man, Edward was placed under the direction of a succession of tutors; for the first couple of years his uncle Golding; then the remarkable scholar, Laurence Nowell; for a time, the no less scholarly Sir Thomas Smith. Young Oxford was sent only briefly to St. John’s College, Cambridge – Burghley’s own; but he emerged from this training well educated, with literary interests and of good promise, considering that along with his rank.” (77) If any library could be said to be worthy of Shakespeare, one can easily say that Cecil’s qualified.

47. Connection Eight Geneva Bible (1904) H.R.D. Anders in Shakespeare’s Books: “The bible he [Shakespeare] would have been most likely to use himself. Was the Genevan Version….” (1935) Richard Noble in Shakespeare’s Biblical Knowledge: “[O]n occasions Shakespeare used the Genevan, just as on others he use the Bishops; and on others again, a rendering found in the Prayer Book,…but the evidence is in favor of Shakepeare’s possession of a Genevan Old Testament.” (57)

48. Connection to Shakspere Geneva Bible ? No known connection. William of Stratford

49. Connection Eight Geneva Bible Connection to Oxford: The Earl of Oxford owned the Geneva Bible and annotated in a way that correlates with Shakespeare’s use of that edition. B.M. Ward in his biography The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford: ‘Payments made by John Hart, Chester Herald, on behalf of the Earl of Oxford from January 1st to September 30th, 1569/70 [...] To William Seres, stationer, for a Geneva Bible gilt, a Chaucer, Plutarch’s works in French, with other books and papers…’ (32-33) (Plutarch was also a prime source for several Shakespeare plays.) Oxford’s Geneva Bible is currently owned by The Shakespeare Folger Library and is the subject of a dissertation by Dr. Roger Stritmatter of the University of Massachusetts.

50. Connection Nine Golding’s Metamorphoses (1598) Francis Meres in A Comparative Discourse of our English Poets with the Greeke, Latine, and Italian Poet, quoted in The Shakspere-Allusion Book, Vol. 1: “As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare…” (46) (1965) Stratfordian John Frederick Nims in his Introduction to Ovid’s Metamorphoses: The Arthur Golding Translation (1567): “L. P. Wilkinson, in the best book we have on Ovid, reminds us that Shakespeare echoes him about four times as often as he echoes Vergil, that he draws on every book of the Metamorphoses, and that there is scarcely a play untouched by his influence. Golding’s translation, through the many editions published during Shakespeare’s lifetime, was the standard Ovid in English. If Shakespeare read Ovid so, he read Golding.” (xx)