Shakespeare and Oxford: 25 Curious Connections

Shakespeare and Oxford: 25 Curious Connections

Edward De Vere,17th Earl of Oxford

William Shakespeare, the Writer

Shakespeare and OxfordShakespeare and Oxford25 Curious Connections25 Curious Connections

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The Crime and the Suspects

Shakespearethe WriterEdward De Vere

17th Earl of Oxford

The Crime

Williamof Stratford

The First Step

Characters in Hamlet

IdiosyncraticTopicalEvents

Shakespeare’s Library & Books

Law, Music Power, & Italy

Shakespeare’s Fellow Poets

Language & Accolades

The Shakespeare Dedicatees

1. What do Stratfordian Scholars say about the writer Shakespeare?

The Second Step


IdiosyncraticTopical Events






2. How does William of Stratford connect to these people and things?

The Third Step


Idiosyncratic TopicalEvents






3. What connections exist between Oxford and these people and things?



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)

(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)

Topical Characters

Connection OneWilliam 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)

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)

Connection One


(1937) Stratfordian J. Dover Wilson in The Essential Shakespeare:

“Polonius is almost without doubt intended as a caricature of Burleigh….” (104)

Hurstfield: (1958) Burleigh speaks with “the authentic voice of Polonius.”


The following orthodox Shakespearean scholars have endorsed the identification of Polonius with Burghley:

Stratfordian Lilian Winstanley in Hamlet and the Scottish Succession (1920)

E. K. Chambers in William Shakespeare (1930)

J. Dover Wilson in The Essential Shakespeare (1937)

Conyers Read in Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth (1955)

Joel Hurstfield in The Queen’s Wards (1958)

A.L. Rowse in William Shakespeare: A Biography (1963)

James Sutherland and Joel Hurstfield in Shakespeare's World (1964)O.J. Campbell and Quinn, The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare (1966)

William Cecil, Lord Burghley as Polonius

Connection One

Shakespeare the writer

Connection TwoAnne 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)


(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 eaves dropper 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)


“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)

Connections One and Two


Anne Cecilas Ophelia

Shakespeare the writer




?William of Stratford




Connection OneConnection 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.

Connection TwoConnection 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)

Connection TwoLilian 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)




Earl of OxfordEarl of Oxfordas Hamletas Hamlet

Connection Three: 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)

(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)

Hamlet as Autobiography

Connection to Shakspere

William of Stratford

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

Connection ThreeThe 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.


• 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.


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.

Idiosyncratic Topical Events



Connection FourBed 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)

Connection FiveAttacked 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)

Connection SixGad’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.

Connection SixGad’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 my self 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 travellng on business connected with the Exchequer, hence their appeal to the Lord Treasurer Burghley.



?Topical connections? Uh….





Connection SevenShakespeare’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)


(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)



? 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.

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)


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.

Connection EightGeneva 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)



? No known connection.

Geneva Bible

Connection EightGeneva 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.)

Connection Eight

Oxford’s Geneva Bible

Title page from the Earl of Oxford’s Geneva Bible, courtesy the Folger Shakespeare Library

Connection Eight

Oxford’s Geneva Bible

Connection Eight

Oxford’s Geneva Bible: Almes

Connection Eight

Oxford’s Geneva Bible: Annotation “give unto the poore.”

Connection Eight

Oxford’s Geneva Bible: Marginal Note: [The Wea]pon of the [Go]dly is Praier.

Connection Eight

Oxford’s Geneva Bible: “Look not on his countenance.”

Connection Eight

Nb.: These slides are illustrative, not argumentative. They are presented merely to invite the reader to consider arguments made in detail in other contexts for the relevance of the de Vere Geneva Bible (See Stritmatter 2001, available at http://www.Shake-speares-bible.com), which are too complex to consider in detail here.

Oxford’s Geneva Bible: “Look not on his countenance.”

Connection NineGolding’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)


(1993) Stratfordian Jonathan Bate in Shakespeare and Ovid: “If Shakespeare and his contemporaries owed their intimacy with Ovidian rhetoric to the grammar schools, their easy familiarity with Ovidian narrative was as much due to Golding.” (29)



? No known connection. Orthodox scholars speculate that William read Golding at the Stratford Grammar School, but there is no record that William attended this school.

Golding’s Metamorphoses


Connection to Oxford: Arthur Golding was Oxford’s uncle, and they both lived in William Cecil’s household in the earlier years that Golding spent translating Ovid. Part of Oxford’s early education was an in-depth, 2-hour-per-day study of Latin.

Stratfordian Louis Thorn Golding, a descendent of Arthur Golding, in An Elizabethan Puritan: The Life of Arthur Golding: “It has been assumed that he acted as tutor to his nephew Edward. No definite record has been found indicating such a connection which, however, would appear reasonable in view of the factor of relationship as well as the fitness of the one and the youth of the other. . . It is evident, however, that Arthur was in close contact with the lad and was interested in and observant of the progress and the development of his nephew’s brilliant mind. This is made clear in the dedication to him of his translation of Trogus Pompeius: ‘I have had experience thereof myself how earnest a desire your honor hath naturally grafted in you to read, peruse and communicate with others as well the histories of ancient times and things done long ago, also the present state of things in our days.” (29, 30)


Young Edward was then 14 years old. Oxford’s astonishingly precocious intellect is further evidenced by the statement of his other tutor, Lawrence Nowell, Dean of Lichfield, to Lord Burghley the year before: “I clearly see that my work for the Earl of Oxford cannot be much longer required.”

Connection TenCastiglione’s The Courtier

(1916) Shakespeare’s England: “There was a favourite Elizabethan story, which illustrates this practice; it is alluded to by the porter in Macbeth:

Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, I’ the name of Beelzebub? Here’s a farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time. (II. Iii. 3-6)

…It is told long before Shakespeare’s time by Castiglione in his book of the Courtier….” (I, 39)

(1928) W. B. Drayton Henderson in the Everyman edition of The Courtier: “[W]ithout Castiglione we should not have Hamlet…. But it is not only Shakespeare’s Hamlet that seems to follow Castiglione. Shakespeare himself does.” (xiv, xvi)


(1958) Abbie Findlay Potts in Shakespeare and The Faerie Queen: “The Book of the Courtier, has again and again been cited to show that Shakespeare’s persons illustrate ideas of courtliness….” (84)

(1966) The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare: “[Castiglione] exerted a strong influence on the courtly ideals of Elizabeth’s reign. The ‘merry war’ of Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing may be derived from a similar exchange of wit in The Courtier.” (99)

(1990) Stratfordian Charles Boyce in Shakespeare A to Z: “Il Libro del Cortegiano was translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby, appearing in 1561 as The Courtyer. Shakespeare may have read Castiglione in Italian, however.” (98)




Castiglione’s The Courtier


Connection to Oxford: In 1572 Oxford wrote the Latin Preface to the Latin translation of The Courtier by Bartholomew Clerke, his tutor at Cambridge.

From Ward’s translation of the Preface:

“Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, Viscount Bulbeck and Baron Scales and Badlesmere to the Reader – Greeting.

A frequent and earnest consideration of the translation of Castiglione's Italian work, which has now for a long time been undertaken and finally carried out by my friend Clerke, has caused me to waver between two opinions: debating in my mind whether I should preface it by some writing and letter of my own, or whether I should do no more than study it with a mind full of gratitude. The first course seemed to demand greater skill and…


…art than I can lay claim to, the second to be a work of no less good will and application. To do both, however, seemed to combine a task of delightful industry with an indication of special good-will. I have therefore undertaken the work, and I do so the more willingly, in order that I may lay a laurel wreath of my own on the translation in which I have studied this book, and also to ensure that neither my good-will (which is very great) should remain unexpressed, nor that my skill (which is small) should seem to fear to face the light and the eyes of men.” (80-1)

Gabriel Harvey’s comment to Oxford on this Preface from his 1578 Gratulationes Valdinenses: “Let that courtly epistle, more polished even than the writings of Castiglione himself, witness how greatly thou dost excel in letters.” (88)

Oxford was still in his 20’s.

Connection ElevenCardan’s Comforte

(1839) Stratfordian Francis Douce in Illustrations of Shakespeare regarding Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy: “There is a good deal on the subject in Cardanus’s Comforte… a book which Shakespeare had certainly read.” (133)

(1845) Stratfordian Joseph Hunter in New Illustrations of Shakespeare: “[Cardin’s Comforte] seems to be the book which Shakespeare placed in the hands of Hamlet.” (II, 243)

(1930) Stratfordian Lily Campbell in Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes: “It is easily seen that this book of Cardan has long been associated with Hamlet. I should like to believe that Hamlet was actually reading it or pretending to read it as he carried on his baiting of Polonius.” (n. 134)


(1934) Stratfordian Hardin Craig in his article “Hamlet’s Book” in the Huntington Library Bulletin, No. 6:

“[T]he correspondences between Hamlet and Cardan’s Comforte are really very close… many of them are marked by circumstances of particularity, which might be called arguments from sign, indicating that the Shakespearean passages in question did actually come by suggestion or borrowing from Cardan’s Comforte rather than from any of the numerous other writings from which they might have been derived.” (35)




Cardan’s Comforte


Connection to Oxford: Thomas Bedingfield’s 1571 translation of Cardan’s Comforte was dedicated to Oxford. Bedingfield reveals that the translation was at Oxford’s bidding. Furthermore, the translation contains a letter to Bedingfield by Oxford that reveals he commanded its publication. After the letter is a poem to the Reader, written by Oxford, an almost unheard of act by a nobleman.

From the dedication (modernized from the 1576 edition):

“To the Right Honourable and my good Lord the Earl of Oxenforde, Lord great Chamberlaine of England. MY GOOD LORD, I can give nothing more agree able to your mind, and my fortune then the willing performance of such service as it shall please you to command me unto: And therefore rather to obey then boast of my cunning, and as a new sign of mine old devotion, I do present the book your lordship so long desired….


…Sure I am it would have better beseemed me to have taken this travail in some discourse of Arms (being your L. chief profession & mine also) then in Philosophers skill to have thus busied my self: yet since your pleasure was such, and your knowledge in either great, I do (as I will ever) most willingly obey you. And if any either through skill or curiosity do find fault with me, I trust not withstanding for the respects aforesaid to be holden executed.” (Italics added.)

From Oxford’s letter to Bedingfield: “To my loving friend Thomas Bedingfield Esquire, one of her Majesties gentlemen Pentioners. After I had perused your letters good master Bedingfield, finding in them your request far differing from the desert of your labour, I could not chose but greatly doubt, whether it were better for me to yield you your desire, or execute mine own intention towards the publishing of your Book.”

Law, Music, Power, & Italy





Connection TwelveKnowledge of Law

(1790) Stratfordian lawyer Edmond Malone in The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare: “His knowledge of legal terms is not merely such as might be acquired by the casual observation of even his all-comprehending mind.” (qtd. by Greenwood 373)

(1865) Richard Grant White in Memoirs of the Life of Shakespeare: "No dramatist of the time . . . used legal phrases with Shakespeare's readiness and exactness. . . legal phrases flow from his pen as part of his vocabulary, and parcel of his thought" (373).

(1883) Stratfordian Senator Cushman Davis in The Law in Shakespeare: “[W]here such knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law, Shakespeare appears in perfect possession of it.” (4)


(1911) Stratfordian lawyer Edward J. White in Commentaries on the Law in Shakespeare: “True, almost every play, as well as the sonnets, display great legal learning and accurate knowledge, not only of legal terms, but of the science and philosophy of the law, as well.” (7-8)

(1959) Chief Justice John C. Wu in Fountain of Justice: “Shakespeare…know[s] his common law and natural law pretty well. He knows the psychological reason for case law.” (86)


(2000) J. Anthony Burton in The Shakespeare Newsletter: “[In Hamlet ] there is a consistent and coherent pattern of legal allusions to defeated expectations of inheritance, which applies to every major character. The allusions run the gamut from points of common knowledge by landowners or litigants, to technical subtleties only lawyers would appreciate, but their common theme is disinheritance and the way it can occur. It has already been suggested that the many legal allusions in the play indicate it was written with a legally sophisticated audience in mind. Who else, after all, but lawyers and law students would appreciate the Gravedigger’s parody of legal reasoning in a forty-year old decision written in the corrupted version of Norman-English known as Law French?”



? No known connection. The record shows that William had some experience with lawsuits and property, but no record shows that William attended or was associated with Gray’s Inn, or engaged in legal activity as a lawyer.

Knowledge of Law


Connection to Oxford: Oxford matriculated at Gray’s Inn, although there is no evidence of residency, and in his position as premier Earl, he sat as a judge on state trials, including both the Mary Queen of Scots trial and the Essex trial.

Stratfordian Conyers Read in Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth. “In 1567, following Burghley’s pattern, [the Earl of Oxford] entered Gray’s Inn.” (126) Oxford was then 17 years old.

• Oxford’s position would require that he have a formidable legal education.

• At least one of Oxford’s tutors was an acknowledged scholar in Civil Law – Sir Thomas Smith, who tutored Oxford from the age of 4 to 12. Smith did not see law as a technical sideline, but rather an integrated part of one’s education.

• Oxford was raised in the most legal/political house in England. And Cecil was noted for encouraging the nobility to have a thorough education, for the good of the country.

Connection ThirteenKnowledge of Music

(1931) Stratfordian E. W. Naylor in Shakespeare and Music: “It is scarcely a matter of surprise, therefore, that the musical student should look in Shakespeare for music, and find it treated of from several points of view, completely and accurately.” (1)

(1963) Stratfordian F. W. Sternfeld in Music in Shakespearean Tragedy:

“This book is the first to treat at full length the contribution which music makes to Shakespeare’s great tragedies…. Here the playwright’s practices are studied in conjunction with those of his contemporaries: Marlowe and Jonson, Marston and Chapman. From these comparative assessments there emerges the method that is peculiar to Shakespeare: the employment of song and instrumental music to a degree hitherto unknown, and their use as an integral part of the dramatic structure.” (inside cover)


(1966) The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare:

“Shakespeare’s familiarity with the music of his time is indicated by more than 500 passages in his works. His enthusiasm for this art is manifested in the observances of many of his sympathetic characters….Shakespeare was acutely aware of the emotional and dramatic appeal of the actual music that could be recalled to the minds of his audience….Shakespeare’s uses of vocal music in his plays were manifold, and always purposeful, ranging from appropriate moments of pure entertainment to those of complete and indispensable integration with the drama in order to illuminate character or carry the action forward.” (574, 575)




Knowledge of Music


Connection to Oxford: Oxford was known as an accomplished musician and patron of music. John Farmer dedicated two music books to him. Two musical works bearing his name, The Earl of Oxford’s March and The Earl of Oxford’s Galliard, may have been composed by him.

John Farmer, The First Set of English Madrigals (1599), in his dedication to Oxford: “Most Honorable Lord… I have presumed to tender these Madrigals only as remembrances of my service and witness of your Lordships liberal hand, by which I have so long lived, and from your Honorable mind that so much have loved all liberal Sciences: … for without flattery be it spoken, those that know your Lordship know this, that using this science as a recreation, your Lordship have overgone most of them that make it a profession. Right Honorable Lord, I hope it shall not be distasteful to number you here amongst the favorers of Music, and the practicers, no more then Kings and Emperors that have been desirous to be in the roll of Astronomers, that being but a star fair, the other an Angels choir.

Connection FourteenKnowledge of Power

(1892) Whitman: “[O]nly one of the ‘wolfish earls’ so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendent and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works.”

(1929) H. B. Charlton in Shakespeare, Politics and Politicians, referring to the history plays: “A better name would be political plays, for they are plays in which the prevailing dramatic interest is in the fate of a nation. Since that is their nature there will be in them much of what Shakespeare’s insight had apprehended of the forces which shape a nation’s destiny.”


(1965) Adolf A. Berle, former ambassador and special assistant to the Secretary of State under President Kennedy, in Power, his treatment of modern political power in its myriad manifestations: “One wonders what the personal reveries of a Plantagenet or Tudor dictator must have been. Shakespeare probably gives a better analysis than historians. His pictures of the breakdown of MacBeth, of Richard II, and of Richard III are more convincing than most historical studies….[Shakespeare’s] historical dramas are poetry all the way through. Reference has been made in the text to a few interesting passages only. Regretfully, I have omitted many more. Take, for example, the evolution of MacBeth from well-meaning field commander to murderous police-state dictator, leading to loss of touch with reality and consequent downfall. It could be paralleled by the history of several contemporary Caribbean dictators I have known…or, for that matter, by the chronicles of contemporary European dictators. Interplay of personality and power is constant; perhaps the best education a power holder could have would be a solid acquaintance with Shakespeare’s plays.” (122, 579)



? No known connection. He is never mentioned in the company of power-holders or being present in Court.

Knowledge of Power


Connection to Oxford: Oxford had frequent access to Court, an insider’s experience with Elizabeth, the machinations of foreign heads of states and ambassadors, and fawning courtiers. He saw power manifested in a variety of corruptions. Furthermore, being raised as a ward in Burghley’s household, and given his noble position, Oxford would have been exposed to the absolute center of England’s power.

A. L. Rowse in Eminent Elizabethans: “The 17th Earl of Oxford was, as the numbering shows, immensely aristocratic, and this was the clue to his career. In Elizabethan society full of new and upcoming men, some of them at the very top, like the Bacons and Cecils – the Boleyns themselves, from whom the Queen descended, were a new family – the Oxford earldom stood out as the oldest in the land. He was the premier earl and, as hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain, took place on the right hand of the Queen and bore the sword of state before her.” (75)

Connection FifteenKnowledge of Italy

(1873) Stratfordian Karl Elze in Essays on Shakespeare: “Distinguished Shakespearean scholars have expressed their conviction that Shakespeare visited Upper Italy, especially Venice, and that within and without his works there are numerous weighty intimations calculated to awaken and support the belief in such a journey; nay, that if any supposed journey of Shakespeare can be made probable, it is above all the journey to Italy….Mr. Ch. A. Brown frankly admits that nothing can shake his faith in Shakespeare’s travel’s in Italy, which, he adds, not only extended to Verona and Venice, but also to Padua, Bologna, Florence, and Pisa, probably even as far as Rome.” (262)


(1930) Stratfordian E.K. Chambers in William Shakespeare: “Much research has been devoted to a conjecture that he spent part of this period in northern Italy. It is certainly true that when the plague was over he began a series of plays with Italian settings, which were something of a new departure in English drama; that to a modern imagination, itself steeped in Italian sentiment, he seems to have been remarkably successful in giving a local colouring and atmosphere to these; and even that he shows familiarity with some minute points of local topography.” (61)


(1949) Stratfordian Ernesto Grillo in Shakespeare and Italy: “Shakespeare evinces a varied and profound knowledge of the country in general and of our cities in particular….Innumerable are the passages where he speaks of special characteristics of our peninsula, of her history, and of her customs…. He knew that Padua with all its learning was under the protection of Venice and that Mantua was not….The various scenes in Othello are no mere Venetian reminiscences, but pictures exhaling the very spirit of Venice, which Shakespeare has transferred to his drama.” (qtd. In Sobran 98, 135)



? No known connection. Orthodox scholars now doubt that he ever left England.

Knowledge of Italy


Connection to Oxford: Of the 16 months Oxford traveled the continent, 10 were spent in Upper Italy, primarily in Venice, Padua, Milan, and Florence.

Alan H. Nelson, Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, supplies Oxford’s itinerary on his web site:

Oxford first arrived in Venice in May 1575, made it the base of his operations, and interrupted his stay on at least three different occasions:

•Between May and 23 September, when he visited Genoa and Milan (also Palermo, Sicily?) Oxford was back in Venice on 23 September.

•On 27 November, when he visited Padua. Oxford was in back Venice on 11 December.

•Between 12 December and 26 February 1576, when he visited Florence and Siena (he was in the latter city on 3 January). Oxford was back in Venice by 26 February and remained until 6 March.

•Oxford left Venice for Paris on March, travelling via Milan and Lyon.


Shakespeare plays with locations in or excessive references to:

Venice: The Merchant of Venice, Othello

Genoa: The Merchant of Venice

Milan: Two Gentleman of Verona, The Tempest

Padua: The Taming of the Shrew

Florence: All’s Well That End’s Well

Verona: Romeo and Juliet, Two Gentleman of Verona(Verona lies midway between Venice and Milan, near Padua.)

Messina: Much Ado About Nothing

Sicily: The Winter’s Tale







Connection SixteenEdmund 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)


(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)



? 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.

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:


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 SeventeenJohn 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)


(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)



? No known connection. Lyly never mentions William, nor does William ever mention Lyly.

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.’”


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 EighteenAnthony 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)


(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)



? No known connection. Munday never mentions William, nor does William ever mention Munday.

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)








Connection NineteenWord 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)


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)


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 TwentyI 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 deemedNot by our feeling, but by others’ seeing: For why should others’ false adulterate eyesGive 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 levelAt 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 TwentyI 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-OneLiterary 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.”


(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.”



? 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…”

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.”


(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.”


(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!









Connection Twenty-TwoHenry 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.”



? 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)

Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton


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 grand daughter 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 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.


“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-ThreeWilliam Herbert, Earl Of Pembroke



? No known connection. Pembroke never mentions William, nor does William ever mention Pembroke.

William Herbert, Earl Of Pembroke

Connection Twenty-ThreeWilliam Herbert, Earl Of Pembroke

Connection to Oxford: Pembroke was at one time in negotiations with Burghley to marry Oxford’s daughter Bridget Vere.


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-FourPhilip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery



? No known connection. Montgomery never mentions William, nor does William ever mention Montgomery.

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.


“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….”


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-FiveTruth 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

WilliamCecil

AnneCecil

Hamlet

Topical Connections to Oxford

Bed Trick

Attacked by Pirates

Gad’s HIll

Book Connections to Oxford

Cecil House Library

Golding’s Metamorphoses

Castiglione’s Courtier

Cardan’s Comfort

GenevaBible

Knowledge Connections to Oxford

Law

Music Italy

Power

Fellow Poet Connections to Oxford

Edmund Spenser

John Lily

AnthonyMunday

Language Connections to Oxford

Word Creation

I Am That I Am

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.

Documents

Shakespeare and Oxford: 25 Curious Connections