Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Verse

“That thine alms may be in secret, and thy father that seeth in secret, he will reward thee openly.” – Matthew 6:4

Acknowledged as one of the greatest writers that ever lived, Shakespeare was also one of the most mysterious. Despite how popular his plays have been throughout history, we know surprisingly little about the man who was supposed to have written them. Consequently, there is much dispute as to whether the man Shakespeare’s works are attributed to was the true author. Historians cling to the belief that it was William of Stratford, while others come to the well-based conclusion that “William Shakespeare” was a pseudonym used by Edward DeVere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.

All we know about William of Stratford is that he was born in 1564, in Stratford-Upon-Avon, married at eighteen, had three children, and died in 1616. In that time he supposedly wrote thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets. He was a successful actor with the Globe Theater in London, but his death went unnoticed. Odd, for such a popular playwright and poet. Even Ben Johnson, who people believe knew him well, made no comment of this great man’s death.

Considerably more is known about the life of Edward DeVere. He was born in 1550, and was trained in all the customary skills of a young Lord. He obtained a bachelor’s degree from Cambridge University and a master’s degree from Oxford. Afterwards, he studied law for one year. His father died when he was twelve, and his mother remarried almost immediately after. Instead of staying with his mother, however, he became a royal ward and William Cecil was appointed his guardian. Cecil was one of the Queen’s oldest and trusted advisors and when DeVere was introduced at court, in his late teens, he became a favorite of the Queen. At the age of twenty-one he married Anne Cecil, daughter of his guardian. Eight months after their marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter. DeVere insisted the child was not his, accused Anne of adultery, and left her. Five years later he admitted he had been wrong and returned to Anne. They had two more daughters before she died suddenly in 1588. Four years later he married Elizabeth Trentham and she outlived him. In 1586, when he was thirty-six years old, Queen Elizabeth granted him a life-time pension of 1,000 pounds a year, an incredibly large sum for the time especially considering how tight-fisted Elizabeth was. The grant made no mention of any duties that DeVere must perform, or of any past services for which he was being rewarded. The grant was paid regularly, and when Elizabeth died King James continued to pay it until DeVere died of the plague in 1604.

Even this simple outline of DeVere’s life seems to raise hints of his being Shakespeare. He had the education, the knowledge of law that Shakespeare appears to have, and events in his life appear to be portrayed in Shakespeare’s plays.

Many Oxfordians claim that DeVere saw himself as Hamlet, because of his mother’s sudden remarriage after his father’s death. Even those who don’t think DeVere was Shakespeare still agree that Polonius and Ophelia are based on William and Anne Cecil. There is no evidence that William of Stratford knew either of them. Nor is there any evidence that William of Stratford knew the earls of Southampton, Montgomery and Pembroke. But those were the only men that Shakespeare dedicated his works to, and they were each proposed as husbands for DeVere’s daughters.

Also, false charges of adultery against a young woman, like DeVere’s against Anne, are a common theme in Shakespeare’s plays, for example, All’s Well That Ends Well, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, Othello, and Much Ado About Nothing.

Prof. Daniel Wright and Mark Alexander, of the Edward DeVere Studies Conference, note that scholars regard John Lyly and Anthony Munday as “writers who exerted prominent influence on Shakespeare,” and both were employed by DeVere. Anthony Munday was DeVere’s secretary, as well as John Lyly who also co-produced plays with DeVere. George Baker’s medical book, The Newe Jewell of Health (1576), was also supposed to have influenced Shakespeare. George Baker was the household physician of DeVere and his book was dedicated to the Countess of Oxford, Anne Cecil.

Furthermore, Wright and Alexander say that scientists have observed that Shakespeare’s record of astronomical knowledge acquired during the Elizabethan age, such as the discovery of Mars’ retrograde orbit, ceases “with astronomical events and discoveries that had been made by mid-1604.” DeVere died in 1604, but William of Stratford lived until 1616. The difference between their deaths is long enough that had William of Stratford been Shakespeare he could have recorded in his plays “the discovery of sunspots, the invention of the telescope, and other significant celestial phenomena and developments in astronomical science.”

Stratfordians claim that William of Stratford received his knowledge from books, but when it comes to his knowledge of Italy the orthodox Italian scholar, Professor Ernest Grillo, says that Shakespeare had to have traveled there extensively because, he says, “the very limitation of the poet’s notion of geography proves that he derived his information form an actual journey through Italy and not from books.”

Shakespeare’s name did not appear until 1593 on Venus and Adonis. Queen Elizabeth’s grant to DeVere was made in 1586. She knew would have known DeVere well enough to recognize his talent, so perhaps the grant was given to assure her those lines at the end of Henry VIII where Cranmer prophesies her greatness.

There are several reasons DeVere may have concealed his identity. Wright says that at the time the public theatre had been “exiled to the darker districts of London” and “convention discouraged many noblemen from identifying themselves with any works they composed.” It is also true that linking Shakespeare’s works to DeVere at the time would have raised many questions about who exactly was being portrayed in his plays. If someone thought that one of the characters in Shakespeare’s plays was based on him, chances are he wouldn’t be very appreciative.

The verse, “that thine alms may be in secret, and thy father that seeth in secret, he will reward thee openly,” is underlined heavily in DeVere’s bible, as are many of the bible quotes used in Shakespeare’s plays. Andy Mills of Linn-Mar highschool surmises that DeVere took comfort in the above verse because he couldn’t use his own name on his works. Perhaps he did regret not being able to use his own name, but I believe he took advantage of it at the same time.

Gabriel Harvey, DeVere’s friend from Cambridge, wrote a description of DeVere entitled Apostrophe ad Eundum meaning apostrophe to the same man, i.e., DeVere. Like DeVere, Harvey was a poet, though he usually wrote in Latin rather than English. In 1578 he said of DeVere, “vultus tela vibrat.” B. M. Ward, an Oxfordian biographer, translated it as “thy countenance shakes a spear,” but Andrew Hannas, an independent classical scholar, says that according to the Dictionary of Thomas Elyot 1538 and 1559, vultus carried the sense of will in addition to countenance. Also, Ward translates singular for the Latin plural. So, an acceptable, and probably correct, translation is “thy will shakes spears.”

Ten years after Harvey’s description was printed, the name “William Shakespeare” appeared for the first time on Venus and Adonis. What better name to use as his pseudonym than one that reveals his identity to those who knew him well?

Ben Johnson’s poem To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare: and What he Hath Left Us is frequently used by the Stratfordians as proof that the William of Stratford was the writer Shakespeare. But it proves no such thing. They claim that when Johnson wrote “And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, From thence to honour thee, I would not seek,” it proved that it was indeed William of Stratford because, unlike DeVere, he didn’t have a well-rounded education. But the phrase “though thou hadst” is conditional, and what he’s really saying is if Shakespeare had small Latin and less Greek, from thence to honour thee I would not seek. This implies that he did know Latin and Greek, and there is no evidence that the William of Stratford did.

Vero Nihil Verius, meaning “Nothing truer than truth,” was the DeVere family motto. Vere is the Latin root for words, like Veracious, that pertain to truth. Shakespeare’s Don Armado writes to Jaquenetta that she is “more fairer than fair, beautiful than beauteous, truer than truth itself,” in Love’s Labour’s Lost. It’s common for lovers to express themselves with outrageous examples of their affection, and it would make sense for DeVere to turn to his motto “nothing truer than truth,” and say that something was truer when expressing his, or his character’s affection.

King Lear tells his daughter Cordelia, “Let it be so, thy truth then be thy dower,” after she refuses to satisfy his vanity by lying about how much she loves him. This takes on a double meaning considering that nothing is truer than truth. Cordelia didn’t lie to receive her dower and though it is worth less on earth, her dowry is worth more in the afterlife, and nothing is truer than that. Shakespeare makes more reference to truth than any other poet of his day.

Of all the evidence Oxfordians use to present their case, Sonnet #76 is seldom mentioned. It is, however, one of the most interesting things in the case for DeVere. The sonnet is as follows, with the parts of interest underlined.

“Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
Oh, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument.
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent.
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.”

In the first line the word “barren” sounds the same as “baron,” which is basically equivalent to DeVere’s title Earl. The second and third lines contain “quick change,” and “glance aside.” A synonym for both could be Vere. The phrase, “And keep invention in a noted weed,” sounds a lot like like a clue from a cryptic crossword puzzle. If it were, you would look for the answer within the words “noted weed,” and come out with “ed weed.” To take the liberty of assuming “ed weed” means Edward may seem a bit much, but the clue says “and keep invention,” which in a cryptic crossword would lead you believe the answer was DeVere’s first name, “Edward.” The following phrase, “every word doth almost tell my name,” also has the qualities of a cryptic crossword clue. This one implies that “every” is the word that almost tells his name. If you remove the “y” and rearrange the letters of “every” you get “vere,” which is almost his name.

Edward T. Oakes, an orthodox scholar, notes that “one twelfth of the words in the Shakespeare canon make their appearance, at least in print, for the first time in English,” and “nearly half of Shakespeare’s words were what scholars call hapax legomena, that is, words that Shakespeare used only once.” But research has discovered that words frequently credited by the Oxford English Dictionary and other sources as having their first usage in Shakespeare actually have shown up earlier in DeVere’s personal letters, say Wright and Alexander.

Unlike William of Stratford Edward DeVere is lauded by his fellow poets and playwrights. Francis Meres said “the best of comedy among us be Edward Earl of Oxford.” William Webbe wrote “I may not omit the deserved commendations of many honourable and noble Lords and Gentlemen in Her Majesty’s Court, which, in the rare devices of poetry, have been and yet are most skilful; among whom the right honourable Earl of Oxford may challenge to himself the title of most excellent among the rest.”

The evidence presented in the case for DeVere is circumstantial, but the evidence presented in the case for William of Stratford leaves much to be desired. Until some major discovery is made, the identity of Shakespeare is really a matter of opinion. No one can say with surety that DeVere or William of Stratford was the greatest writer of all time, and it’s possible no one ever will. But based on the above evidence, I have come to the conclusion that “William Shakespeare” was a pseudonym used by Edward DeVere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, the man whose “will shakes spears.”

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Prof. Daniel Wright & Mark Alexander, Edward DeVere Studies Conference

Andy Mills, Linn-Mar highschool

Andrew Hannas, independent classical scholar

G.B. Harrison, Shakespeare the complete works, copyright 1968, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.