Shakespeare’s Fellow Poets
Law, Music
Power, & Italy
Shakespeare’s
Library & Books
Idiosyncratic
Topical
Events
Characters in
Hamlet
Shakespeare’s
Fellow Poets
Connection Sixteen
Edmund Spenser
(1936) Stratfordian A. S. Cairncross in The Problem of Hamlet: “Like Leir,
[King] Lear also, independently, drew on The Faerie Queen. The form
“Cordelia” comes from Spenser alone.” (169)
(1966) The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare: “Spenser has been
credited with making one of the earliest allusions to Shakespeare. In Colin
Clouts Come home againe, the poet Aëtion is praised as a gentle shepherd
whose muse, ‘full of high thoughts invention,’ does ‘like himselfe Heroically
sound.’. …Numerous verbal parallels suggest that Shakespeare was
familiar with Spenser’s work. A recent trend in scholarship has been the
study of themes and techniques common to these two poets but modified by
the demands of their respective genres.” (818-819)
Connection Sixteen
Edmund Spenser
(1990) Stratfordian Charles Boyce in Shakespeare A to Z:
“[A]uthor of works that influenced Shakespeare. Spenser’s monumental epic
poem The Faerie Queene (published 1590, 1598) provided the playwright
with the inspiration for many passages, especially in the earlier plays and
poems. The pastoral poems in Spenser’s Shepheardes Calendar (1579),
and possibly his great wedding poem Epithalamon (1595), did the same for
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Another of Spenser’s poems, ‘The Teares of
the Muses’ (1591), may be alluded to in the Dream (5.1.52-53).” (612)
Connection to Shakspere
Edmund Spenser
?
William of
Stratford
No known connection. Spenser died in 1599, well
within the time of Shakespeare’s fame as a poet and
playwright. They were the two great poets of that
decade. Yet Spenser never mentions William of
Stratford and William never mentions Spenser.
Connection Sixteen
Edmund Spenser
Connection to Oxford: In The Fairie Queene, Spenser dedicates a sonnet to
Oxford that stands above the other 16 in its astonishing deferment to
Oxford’s special relationship to the Heliconian Imps (the offspring of the nine
Muses), a relationship that would be reserved for someone of
Shakespeare’s stature. Spenser and Oxford were nearly exact
contemporaries.
Receiue most Noble Lord in gentle gree,
The vnripe fruit of an vnready wit:
Which by thy countenaunce doth craue to bee
Defended from foule Enuies poisnous bit.
Which so to doe may thee right well besit,
Sith th’antique glory of thine auncestry
Vnder a shady vele is therein writ,
And eke thine owne long liuing memory,
Succeeding them in true nobility:
Connection Sixteen
Edmund Spenser
And also for the loue, which thou doest beare
To th’Heliconian ymps, and they to thee,
They vnto thee, and thou to them most deare:
Deare as thou art vnto thy selfe, so loue
That loues & honours thee, as doth behoue.
Let’s remember that the offspring of the Nine Muses would include:
Epic Poets, Love Poets, Sacred Poets
Writers of Tragedies, Writers of Comedies
Musicians, Historians, Astronomers, Dancers
Connection Seventeen
John Lily
(1902) Stratfordian R. Warwick Bond in The Complete Works of John Lyly:
“[T]he great majority [of parallels] are too close to be the result of
chance…but enough are given to prove Shakespeare’s intimate knowledge
of the two parts of Euphues…. In the essay in the second volume on ‘Lyly as
a Playwright,’ I have endevoured to show how Shakespeare is indebted to
our author not merely for phrases, similes or ideas, but also in the more
important matter of dramatic technique.” (I. 169)
(1904) Stratfordian H.R.D. Anders in Shakespeare’s Books: “Lyly’s women,
refined, witty, laughing, loving, or reserved, are the prototypes of many of
Shakespeare’s female characters….Shakespeare’s first comedy, Love’s
Labour’s Lost, is in direct imitation of Lyly’s comedies….” (132)
Connection Seventeen
John Lily
(1962) Stratfordian R.A Foakes in his Introduction to the Arden edition of
The Comedy of Errors. “There is no doubt that Shakespeare knew the
elegant prose plays of John Lyly….” (xxxiii)
(1962) Stratfordian G.K. Hunter in John Lyly: The Humanist as Courtier:
”The extreme formality of the structure of Euphues I am suggesting to be a
measure of Lyly’s effort to organize the different levels of experience in this
life so that they throw light on one another. He reflects and comments on the
courtly world of Elizabeth by organizing into witty patterns different
responses to its key ideas – ‘wit’, ‘honour’, ‘love’, ‘royalty’, etc. Seeing his
work in this way we may see how far Lyly could be himself, and also the
entertainer of Elizabeth and other vital creatures, and perhaps the largest
single influence on that ‘spacious’ genre, Shakespearean Comedy.” (10-11)
Connection to Shakspere
John Lily
?
William of
Stratford
No known connection. Lyly never mentions William,
nor does William ever mention Lyly.
Connection Seventeen
John Lily
Connection to Oxford: John Lyly was Oxford’s secretary. He dedicated
Euphues and his England to Oxford. They worked together in producing
plays.
A.L. Rowse points out in Eminent Elizabethans:
”At the end of 1578 John Lyly had published his Euphues: The Anatomy of
Wit, which had prodigious influence at the time. Lyly had been Burghley’s
scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, supported at least in part by the great
man. At this time he had lodgings in the Savoy, which was under Burghley’s
authority; the proximity is enough to account for Oxford’s taking Lyly also
under his wing. In 1582 he dedicated the sequel, Euphues and his England,
to Oxford …: ‘I know none more fit to defend it than one of the Nobility of
England, nor any of the Nobility more ancient or more honourable than your
lordship.’”
Connection Seventeen
John Lily
Rowse also notes their involvement in the theatre: “[T]he Earl of Oxford and
John Lyly used the great house within Blackfriars for performances of plays
by their boys company.”
From the dedication of Euphues and His England (modernized):
“I could not find one more noble in court, then your Honor, who is or should
be under her Majesty chiefest in court, by birth born to the greatest Office, &
therefore me thought by right to be placed in great authority: for who so
compares the honor of your L. noble house, with the fidelity of your
ancestors, may well say, which no other can truly gainsay, Vero nihil verius
[Nothing truer than truth].”
Connection Eighteen
Anthony Munday
(1955) Stratfordian John Russell Brown in the Introduction to the Arden
edition of The Merchant of Venice: “Book III of Munday’s Zelauto…is
especially close to The Merchant in the judge’s plea for mercy….” (xxxi)
(1966) The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare: “Munday’s first extant
play is Fedele and Fortunio (1584)…and may have been used by
Shakespeare as one of his sources for Much Ado About Nothing, where he
might have found not only the general outline of his plot, but the idea for the
characters of Dogberry and Verges as well.” (570)
Connection Eighteen
Anthony Munday
(1987) Stratfordian Samuel Schoenbaum in William Shakespeare: A
Compact Documentary Life: “On one occasion, however – so the evidence
indicates – [Shakespeare] was called upon to doctor a play written by other
hands, for which company is uncertain. That play survives, in damaged and
chaotic shape, in a manuscript with the title ‘The Book of Sir Thomas
Moore’. In its original form a fair copy by Anthony Munday…” (214)
(1990) Stratfordian Charles Boyce in Shakespeare A to Z:
“His first book was Zelauto (1580), a novel written in imitation of John Lyly’s
famous Euphues. Its treatment of usury and Jews may have influenced The
Merchant of Venice. Between 1594 and 1602 he wrote plays for the
Admiral’s Men. Three of these works have survived: John à Kent and John à
Cumber (1594) may have suggested elements of the comic sub-plot of A
Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, and a pair of plays on Robin Hood (both 1598)
may have influenced As You Like It….He was probably the principal author
of Sir Thomas More, which contains a scene by Shakespeare.” (574, 575)
Connection to Shakspere
Anthony Munday
?
William of
Stratford
No known connection. Munday never mentions
William, nor does William ever mention Munday.
Connection Eighteen
Anthony Munday
Connection to Oxford: Munday worked for Oxford, who was his patron;
dedicated several of his works to Oxford, especially Zelauto; and joined
Oxford’s acting troop, “Oxford’s Men.”
A.L. Rowse points out in Eminent Elizabethans:
“Oxford accepted many dedications, and received at least two authors into
his service for a time – John Lyly and Anthony Munday.” (79) “In 1579
Anthony Munday had dedicated The Mirror of Mutability to him; Munday was
taken into the Earl’s service, for the next year he dedicated to him Zelauto,
the Fountain of Fame as his ‘servant’: ‘my simple self (Right Honourable)
having sufficiently seen the rare virtues of your noble mind, the heroical
qualities of your prudent person…’.” (96)
And Charles Boyce in Shakespeare A to Z states: “Munday, originally a
printer apprenticed to John Allde, turned to acting but was unsuccessful – he
appeared with Oxford’s Men in the late 1570s and early 1580s.” (453)
Language & Accolades
Law, Music
Power, & Italy
Shakespeare’s
Library & Books
Idiosyncratic
Topical
Events
Characters in
Hamlet
Shakespeare’s
Fellow Poets
Language &
Accolades
Connection Nineteen
Word Creation
The OED lists Shakespeare as the earliest known user (in public
documents) of many words. Oxford’s letters and poems show an even
earlier usage of these words (among others), many of which predate
Shakespeare’s usage by more than 10 years.
OED: Bifold a. Double, twofold; of two kinds, degrees, etc.
1609 Shakes. Tr. & Cr. v. ii. 144 (Qo.) O madnesse of discourse, that cause
sets up with and against it selfe, By-fould authority. [1 Fol. By foule
authoritie. Globe Bi-fold authority!]
Oxford: “neyther can I suffer yt to enter my thought that a vayne fable can
brandel the clearnes of yowre guyltles conscience sythe all the world doothe
know that the crymes of Sir Charles Dauers were so byfolde, that Iustice
could not dispence any farther” (Oxford’s letter of Nov. 22, 1601)
Connection Nineteen
Word Creation
OED: Despairing, ppl. a.
1591 Shakes. Two Gent. iii. i. 247 Hope is a louers staffe, walke hence with
that, And manage it against despairing thoughts.
Oxford: Yet luck sometimes despairing souls doth save,
A happy star made Giges joy attain.”
(Oxford’s poem: “Reason and Affection” in Paradise of Dainty
Devices, 1576)
OED: Disgraced ppl. a
1591 Shakes. Two Gent. v. iv. 123 Your Grace is welcome to a man
disgrac’d
Oxford: “doo not know by what ore whose aduise it was, to rune that course
so contrarie to my will or meaninge, whiche made her disgraced” (Oxford’s
letter of Apr 27, 1576)
Connection Nineteen
Word Creation
OED: Restoration (Later form of Restauration) 1. The action of restoring
to a former state or position; the fact of being restored or reinstated.
1660 Jrnls. Ho. Comm. 30 May, The happy Restoration of his Majesty to his
People and Kingdoms. [earliest mention in OED]
But used by Shakespeare in 1603 in King Lear IV, 7, 26:
Cordelia: O my deere father, restauration hang
Thy medicine on my lippes
Oxford: “But now the ground wherone I lay my sut beinge so iust and
resonable, that ether I showlde expect sume satisfactione, by way of
recompence, or restoratione of myne owne.” (Oxford’s letter of Oct. 25,
1593)
Connection Twenty
I Am That I Am (Sonnet 121)
Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
When not to be receives reproach of being;
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed
Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing:
For why should others’ false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own:
I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown;
Unless this general evil they maintain,
All men are bad and in their badness reign.
“I am that I am” are God’s words to Moses in the Geneva Bible at Exodus III, 14.
Connection Twenty
I Am That I Am (Sonnet 121)
Connection to Oxford: In a private letter, Oxford uses the exact same phrase in
the exact same first-person reference, a usage that is startlingly unique.
It takes a peculiar mentality to take God’s words to Moses and make them refer to
oneself. Shakespeare does it in Sonnet 121. The only other known usage where the
author uses the words applied to himself in the first person is Oxford in a letter to
Lord Burghley dated October 30, 1584 (modernized):
“But I pray, my lord, leave that course, for I mean not to be your ward nor your child.
I serve her majesty, and I am that I am, and by alliance near to your lordship, but
free, and scorn to be offered that injury, to think I am so weak of government as to be
ruled by servants, or not able to govern myself.”
This connection between Oxford and Shakespeare is intimate and unique.
Connection Twenty-One
Literary Accolades
(1595) William Covell in Polimanteia: “Sweet Shak-speare.”
(1598) Richard Barnfield's "A Remembrance of some English Poets" in
Poems in Divers Humors: “And Shakespeare thou, whose hony-flowing
Vaine, / (Pleasing the World) thy praises doth obtaine.”
(1598) Francis Meres, Palladis Tamiai: “As Plautus and Seneca are
accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines : so
Shakespeare among ye English is the most excellent in both kinds for the
stage. … [T]he Muses would speak with Shakespeares fine filed phrase, if
they would speake English.”
(1598-1601) Gabriel Harvey’s note on a blank page of Speght's translation
of Chaucer: “The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeares Venus,
& Adonis : but … his tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, haue it in
them, to please the wiser sort.”
Connection Twenty-One
Literary Accolades
(1598-1601) From The Returne from Parnassus, Part I : “I'le worshipp sweet
Mr. Shakspeare, and to honoure him will lay his Venus and Adonis under my
pillowe.”
(1603) From "A Mourneful Dittie, entituled Elizabeths Loss" (Anonymous):
“You Poets all braue Shakspeare, Johnson, Greene, / Bestow your time to
write for Englands Queene.”
(1604) John Cooke in Epigrames: “. . . some other humbly craues / For
helpe of Spirits in their sleeping graues, / As he that calde to Shakespeare,
Iohnson, Green, / To write of their dead noble Queene.”
Connection to Shakspere
Literary Accolades
?
William of
Stratford
In Aubry’s Lives: “Mr. William Shakespear was born at
Stratford upon Avon, in the County of Warwick; his
father was a butcher, & I have been told heretofore by
some of the neighbours, that when he was a boy he
exercised his father’s trade, but when he kill’d a calf,
he would do it in high style, & make a speech…”
Connection Twenty-One
Literary Accolades
Connection to Oxford: Praise for Oxford as a poet and dramatist is at a level
appropriate for Shakespeare.
(1584) John Soowthern, Pandora: “De Vere, that hath given him in part: /
The love, the war, honour and art, / And with them an eternal fame…/
Among our well-renowned men, / De Vere merits a silver pen / Eternally to
write his honour… / A man so honoured as thee, / And both of the Muses
and me.”
(1586) William Webbe, A Discourse of English Poetry:“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.”
Connection Twenty-One
Literary Accolades
(1589) The Art of English Poesie: “Noblemen and Gentlemen of Her
Majesty’s own servants, who have written excellently well as it would appear
if their doings could be found out and made public with the rest, of which
number is first the noble gentleman Edward Earl of Oxford….The Earl of
Oxford and Master Edwards of her Majesty’s Chapel for Comedy and
Enterlude.”
(1598) Francis Meres, Palladis Tamiai: “The best for comedy among us be
Edward Earl of Oxford.”
(1613) George Chapman: “I overtook, coming from Italy… / a great and
famous Earl… / Valiant and learn’d, and liberal as the sun, / Spoke and writ
sweetly, or of learned subjects, / Or of the discipline of public weals; / And
‘twas the Earl of Oxford.”
Connection Twenty-One
Literary Accolades
(1622) Henry Peacham in The Compleat Gentleman (modernized):
“In the time of our late Queene Elizabeth, which was truly a golden Age (for
such a world of refined wits, and excellent spirits it produced, whose like are
hardly to be hoped for, in any succeeding Age) above others, who honored
Poesy with their pens and practice (to omit her Majesty, who had a singular
gift herein) were Edward Earle of Oxford, the Lord Buckhurst, Henry Lord
Paget; our Phoenix, the noble Sir Philip Sidney, M. Edward Dyer, M.
Edmund Spencer, M. Samuel Daniel, with sundry others; whom (together
with those admirable wits, yet living, and so well known) not out of Ennui,
but to avoid tediousness I overpass. Thus much of poetry.”
In lauding the great poets of the Golden Age, Peacham mentions Oxford,
but not Shakespeare!
The Shakespeare Dedicatees
Law, Music
Power, & Italy
Shakespeare’s
Library & Books
Idiosyncratic
Topical
Events
Characters in
Hamlet
Shakespeare’s
Fellow Poets
Language &
Accolades
The
Shakespeare
Dedicatees
Connection Twenty-Two
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton
Connection Twenty-Two
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton
From the Dictionary of National Biography:
“Southampton is the only patron of Shakespeare
who is positively known to biographers of the
dramatist. There is therefore strong external
presumption in favour of Southampton’s
identification with the anonymous friend and
patron whom the poet describes in his sonnets
as the sole object of his poetic adulation. The
theory that the majority of Shakespeare’s
sonnets were addressed to Southampton is
powerfully supported by internal evidence.”
Connection to Shakspere
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton
?
William of
Stratford
No known connection. G. P. V. Akrigg admits in
Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton: “We have
no evidence as to when, where, or under what
circumstances William Shakespeare first met the Earl
of Southampton. We have only conjectures.” Samuel
Schoenbaum admits in A Compact Documentary Life
that even though William willed items to his “fellows
Hemynges, Burbage, and Cundell” he strangely
“neglects to mention Southampton.” (193)
Connection Twenty-Two
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton
Connection to Oxford: Lord Burghley sought a marriage between
Southampton and Oxford’s daughter Elizabeth Vere at the time Venus and
Adonis was published, dedicated to Southampton. Some Stratfordians believe
that the marriage sonnets, were written at this time.
From the Dictionary of National Biography:
“At the time that Shakespeare was penning his
eulogies in 1594 Southampton, although just of
age, was still unmarried. When he was seventeen
Burghley had suggested a union between him and
his granddaughter Lady Elizabeth Vere, daughter
of the Earl of Oxford. The Countess of
Southampton approved the match, but
Southampton declined to entertain it. By some
observers at court he was regarded as too
fantastic and volatile to marry at all.”
Connection Twenty-Two
Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton
“In 1594, when most of Shakespeare’s sonnets
were probably written, Southampton was the
centre of attraction among poetic aspirants.…The
opening sequence of seventeen sonnets, in which
a youth of rank and wealth is admonished to marry
and beget a son so that ‘his fair house’ may not fall
into decay, can only have been addressed to a
young peer like Southampton, who was as yet
unmarried, had vast possessions, and was the
sole male representative of his family.”
Perhaps the poet Oxford would write sonnets to
Southampton at this time urging him to marry – his
daughter.
Connection Twenty-Three
William Herbert, Earl Of Pembroke
Connection to Shakspere
William Herbert, Earl Of Pembroke
?
William of
Stratford
No known connection. Pembroke never mentions
William, nor does William ever mention Pembroke.
Connection Twenty-Three
William Herbert, Earl Of Pembroke
Connection to Oxford: Pembroke was at one time in negotiations with
Burghley to marry Oxford’s daughter Bridget Vere.
From the Dictionary of National Biography:
In April 1597 …[Pembroke’s] parents were
corresponding with Burghley respecting a proposal
to marry him to Burghley’s granddaughter, Bridget
Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. …[T]he
proposal came to nothing, although the match was
agreeable to Herbert, and the Earl of Oxford wrote
of him as well brought up and ‘faire conditioned,’
with ‘many good partes in him.’
Connection Twenty-Four
Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery
Connection to Shakspere
Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery
?
William of
Stratford
No known connection. Montgomery never mentions
William, nor does William ever mention Montgomery.
Connection Twenty-Four
Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery
Connection to Oxford: Though Pembroke’s marriage never took place,
Pembroke’s brother, Montgomery, did marry Oxford’s daughter, Susan Vere.
From the Dictionary of National Biography:
“After ‘long love and many changes,’ [Montgomery]
was, in October 1604, ‘privately contracted to my
Lady Susan [Vere, third daughter of Edward,
seventeenth earl of Oxford], without the knowledge
of any of his or her friends’…. On 27 Dec. the
marriage took place at Whitehall with elaborate
ceremony, in which the king took a prominent
part….”
Connection Twenty-Four
Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery
Scholars often speculate how the unpublished
plays in the First Folio got into the hands of the
publishers. It is reasonable to think that if the
author’s daughter were married to someone
associated with the First Folio, that would be a
likely means of transmittal.
Susan Vere is the likely conduit for the transfer of
the Shakespeare manuscripts to Montgomery and
hence to the publishers.
Connection Twenty-Five
Truth is Truth
(1922) Levin Schücking in Character Problems in
Shakespeare’s Plays: “A fundamental feature of
Hamlet’s character is a fanatical sense of truth.”
“Nay it is ten times true, for truth is truth To th’end of
reckning.” (Meas. for Meas. V. 1. 45-46) (1604)
In Latin “Vere” means “Truly” or “according to Truth.”
Oxford’s motto, that of the De Veres, was Vero nihil
verius (Nothing truer than truth, or Nothing truer
than the true man). In a letter to Robert Cecil,
Oxford plays upon the Latin meaning.
“…for truth is truth though never so old, and time
cannot make that false which was once true.”
(Oxford’s letter to Robert Cecil, May 7, 1603)
Hamlet Connections to Oxford
Anne
Cecil
William
Cecil
Hamlet
Topical Connections to Oxford
Attacked by
Pirates
Bed Trick
Gad’s HIll
Book Connections to Oxford
Castiglione’s
Courtier
Golding’s
Metamorphoses
Cecil House
Library
Cardan’s
Comfort
Geneva
Bible
Knowledge Connections to Oxford
Music
Law
Italy
Power
Fellow Poet Connections to Oxford
John Lily
Edmund
Spenser
Anthony
Munday
Language Connections to Oxford
I Am That
I Am
Word
Creation
Literary
Accolaades
Truth is Truth
Dedicatee Connections to Oxford
Shakespeare is Oxford
Truth is Truth though never so
old, and time cannot make that
false which was once true.