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Sunday, December 15, 2024

Why Shakespeare was Correct: Bohemia did have a seacoast.

A member of my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Facebook Group asked, some two months ago, now, “...can anyone point me to documentation about Bohemia having a seacoast in the 16th century?” She was the member of another group that was reading Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.

Surely they have finished reading the play by now (some two months later) but the question of the Bohemian seacoast has lingered for centuries now (since a comment by Ben Jonson) without a definitive answer. It is much bigger than a reading group question. As it turned out, I found myself making my way through a particularly dense historical thicket. The question revealed itself to actually be several questions. I could only forge onward on the chance that I might reach the answers to those several questions surrounding Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale that have evaded those who came before.

The first question is: What is the source of Shakespeare's play? The answer is that the main source of the plot comes from Robert Greene's Pandosto, the Triumph of Time (1588). The first edition of this work appeared in 1588. According to Bullough:

Shakespeare's main source was Robert Greene's romance, Pandosto, the Triumph of Time, which had as running title “The History of Dorastus and Fawnia”. Editions of this popular work appeared in 1592, 1595, 1607, and often later.1 

P. G. Thomas adds “editions of 1614, 1632, 1636, 1648, 1688, 1696 and 1703.”2

A key line in the 1588, edition reads “the King shall live without an heir, if that which is lost be not found.”3 Beginning with the 1607, all further editions read “the King shall die without an heir”. The line in The Winter's Tale reads “the King shall liue without an Heire, if that which is lost, be not found.”4 For this reason, Shakespeare's play is understood by many to have been based upon one of the 1588, 1592, or 1595 editions of the Greene novel.

Next question: Does Pandosto feature a Bohemian seacoast? In Pandosto we find the following:

they got to the sea shore; where, with many a bitter curse taking their leave of Bohemia, they went aboard.

There are other references to the seacoast, as well. Pandosto, the king of Bohemia is hosting his childhood friend, Egistus, king of Sicily. Because Shakespeare follows his source, his play, too, features a seashore.

Antigonus. Thou art perfect then, our ship hath toucht upon
The Desarts of Bohemia.

But his play begins not hosting the king of Sicily in Bohemia but the king of Bohemia in Sicily. It is difficult to imagine any other reason for this than that he knew or suspected that Bohemia did not have a seacoast in the immediate vicinity of the royal palace as of the time the play was being written.

Regardless, the only way Shakespeare could place the baby girl where Florizell, the prince of Bohemia, could meet and fall in love with her, some 16 years later, was to have the ship that was carrying her deposit her on a shore in faraway Bohemia. On each disparate shore, Greene and Shakespeare had the babe discovered by a shepherd who took her home to his wife. In both, the old couple brought her up as their own.

It is likely that one or more of three options explains this first part of our inquiry. Shakespeare either 1) wanted to keep Bohemia in the play, regardless that it had no coast, so his audience would connect it with the highly popular novel Pandosto; or, 2) didn't know or care whether Bohemia had a seacoast, from time to time, in history, or not. (It was, after all, a play not a geography lesson); or, 3) decided that there was a seacoast near enough Bohemia to serve in a pinch so long as the baby's destination was a desert distant from land-locked Bohemia-proper. Options 1 & 3 seem likely, option 2 quite possible.

Actually, the author with a major problem, geographically speaking, was Greene, who had the tiny babe float in a tiny boat for two days in order to arrive in Sicily.

at last let us come to shew the tragical discourse of the young infant. Who being tossed with wind and wave floated two whole days without succour, ready at every puff to be drowned in the sea, till at last the tempest ceased and the little boat was driven with the tide into the coast of Sicilia, where sticking upon the sands it rested.

Writing a fairy tale, of sorts, he may have reasoned, the tiny boat could safely transport the babe wherever he wished in however impossibly short a time.

Like many such incongruities, Greene's will provide clues that allow us painstakingly to untangle the thicket of which I have spoken. A thicket so tangled that I have spent many hours of spare time (actually, there is no such thing in my life), for these two past months, sputtering and struggling to get through to the other side.

First, how did Greene get his Bohemian seacoast? Upon the death of Boleslau III, king of Poland, in 1138, Poland was divided into five principalities, ruled by his four eldest sons. This greatly weakened the country. It was soon a country no longer, but, rather, an area fractured into shifting duchies and principates. One of those duchies was Silesia. It, the pieces of Poland, and their neighbor, Bohemia, fluctuated in the amount of territory each commanded, and, thus, claimed, during any period of time from 1138 to the early-15th century.

The borders of these duchies with neighboring Germany, was marked by the Oder River. Germany controlled the west bank and German was the common language there. The various duchies/principates controlled various portions of the east bank at different times. Most often, Bohemia and/or Silesia controlled the east bank. They and/or Denmark controlled the city and port of Szczecin, at the mouth of the Oder, at any given time. Even when control of the east bank was uncertain, the locals continued to speak the Silesian dialect of the Slavic language.

The Oder River delta formed the Szczecin lagoon, at its mouth, on the seaside of which was the port for the region. The lagoon was rimmed by what the Latin writers of the Chronicles of the Time (Greene's source, to which we will return) would often refer to a des(i)ertus. To them it meant “scrub land” rather than desert. At the end of the Oder River, then, was the Bohemian seaport of Szczecin. 

This only begins to describe the alternative possibilities of where Shakespeare's desert came from (there is no desert in what remains of Greene's text) and Shakespeare appears to have known nothing of Silesian chronicles. From just where the desert might have come is an interesting subject in itself which must wait its turn in the infamous interminable queue.

There is no reason to believe that Shakespeare knew Greene's source much less had read it. His choices seem to have been entirely exigent. Greene's novel was so popular that the playwright desired to keep the connection between it and his play clear by having the baby girl sail between Sicily and Bohemia.

It is also clear that Robert Greene took portions of his tale from old Silesian chronicles that he did not feel the need to understand with precision. I look forward to provide an explanation of the relationship between the two as time permits (vide "interminable queue" supra).



Given the level of stylistic maturity of The Winter's Tale, and the quote mentioned above, it seems likely that the play was composed following the release of the 1596 edition of the novel. Like the early version of The Merchant of Venice (known by the title The Jew),5 an earlier could well have been staged in 1589 and revised for production in 1596. External references suggest it was brought on the stage of the Globe in 1612 for a run following the release of the 1607 edition of the novel. 

Among the references implying a 16th century run are several in a novel entitled The Countesse of Montgomeries Urania (1621) as I have revealed in my recent book Shakespeare's The Tempest: a Wedding Masque for Susan de Vere (2024).6 Of course, the Countess of Montgomery was Susan de Vere, the daughter of Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.

Ironically, then, Shakespeare was right for all the wrong reasons. During the time of the chronicles, which were the main source of Robert Green's Pandosto, Bohemia had a seacoast. Orders of magnitude more ironic, we will next see that Greene was wrong about it having a seacoast. Go figger.



1 Bullough, Geoffrey. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare: Romances (1957). 118.

2 Thomas, P. G. Greene's 'Pandosto' Or 'Dorastus And Fawnia' Being The Original Of Shakespeare's 'Winter's Tale' (1907). ix.

3 Thomas, 26.

4 A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Winter's Tale. Horace Howard Furness, ed. (1928), III.ii.143-4.

5 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. The Tempest: a Wedding Masque for Susan de Vere (2024). ii.37. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CY5YYG1F/

6 Purdy, Tempest. ii.10-12.

[General note] The observations on the language and political situations on the banks of the Oder River incorporate considerable information from: 

Kamusella, Tomasz. "The Changing Lattice of Languages, Borders, and Identities in Silesia". The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders (2016). 

Also from one or more medieval Polish and Silesian chronicles which will be explained as time comes available. 





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Saturday, December 07, 2024

Addendum to Shelley Maycock's “The 1604 Question”: Pericles and Shakespeare as “serial reviser”.

Earlier in the year I posted several articles regarding King James's promise to raise Ben Jonson's annual pension in 1621. The articles came together from various sources immediate and gathered over the years. In a remarkable coincidence — such as is more common now that the internet floods us with information of every kind — I soon afterwards found a Shakespeare Oxfordian Fellowship video presentation, in my YouTube recommendations, relating to Jonson and the (I thought) rather obscure direction my particular research was taking.

It was my intention to offer some observations upon the presentation linked through my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Facebook Group. Another nearly overwhelming aspect of the Internet, however, is that it leaves one with a vast amount to address in a finite amount of time. The queue of matters that must be addressed never grows shorter, only longer. Who knows how long it will take to offer my observations.

I have sampled from the SOF annual meeting presentations over the years. They have provided points of departure on a number of topics which I have pondered, some that I had already addressed in print. Perhaps I can develop a bit of momentum towards the Jonson by addressing a presentation just posted from this year's conference.

I find Shelley Maycock's “The 1604 Question,” pleasing especially as it embraces my long time theme of Shakespeare as “serial reviser” (not a phrase that I have used that I am aware). Where our details converge or diverge does not matter for the moment so much as our general agreement. The claim that Shakespeare often rewrote earlier, more primitive plays of lesser playwrights comes only from the need to fit the plays into the little we know of the biography of the Stratford man.

Of course, some of the plays do prove to have been rewritten versions of earlier plays by others. The traditional scholarship is certainly correct regarding The Life and Death of King John, for one example. The first version was largely written by George Peele. Some small amount bears the style of Shakespeare. This, I would assert, reflects the fact that Peele wrote for the boys of the first Blackfriars, and its continuation, after 1584,1 as the Children of St. Paul's, still managed by Edward de Vere and John Lily. The play was probably purchased shortly before the Paul's Boys also ceased performing plays, circa 1589. Vere saw fit to rewrite a promising play that he owned, Peele was satisfied to have received his paycheck, and thus we have the second version with much more Shakespeare and much less Peele. There is considerable reason to believe that something very similar can be said of The Taming of a / the Shrew.

The question as to how much of which plays were written by Shakespeare, at various times between 1576 and 1604, surely seems to guarantee an impossibly snarled mess of possibilities. But it is able, in large part, to be untangled and with remarkable results. The matches to the known biographies and styles of Vere, Peele, Green, Marlowe, et alii, are really quite remarkable.

But the first Leir was decidedly not written by Shakespeare. Neither was the first Henry VI. He did, however, rewrite the former and revise the latter.

It is of particular satisfaction to me to learn that my identification of Love's Labours Won as an earlier title of an earlier version of Much Adoe About Nothing, in my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare (2013, 2017)2, is now considered likely among at least some core Oxfordians.

Moreover, it appears that my Shakespeare in 1573 (2021)3 and Virtual Grub Street articles “Rolfe vs. the Orthodoxy on Shakespeare's Pericles” (2021)4 and “D— W— R— and Pericles as Tudor Theatrical Revue" (2023)5 have also percolated up through the Oxfordian soil. It is now asserted by some that Shakespeare/Vere wrote the whole (neither John Fletcher nor George Wilkins playing any part). That parts and stray passages of the play attributed to Wilkins are actually the 1578-ish version of Vere/Shakespeare peeking out at us.6 It is always a pleasure to learn that one's work has been approved — or at least adopted — by one's fellow workers in the vineyard.

I offer a different theory than Shelley, however, on the topic of censorship. Being an Earl, and closely connected with the Hunsdons, surely Vere did not have to apply to anyone in the companies to have his plays produced. Early on, as a co-writer, at times, in order to introduce himself to the London popular stage, he and his fellows (who Chettle tells us didn't even know who he was7) submitted their plays to the companies which shepherded them through the standard processes for performance and eventual publication. Plays he wrote solo probably went directly through a Lord Hunsdon for their first introduction and were anonymous to all but a few others.

Every sign is that the companies understood that they did not own his plays therefore did not have permission to publish them. The plays published until shortly after Meres outed Vere's pen-name, in 1598, and he had gained a reputation to defend, were likely pirated — perhaps by the wily, avaricious Stratford man who had the name and ready access to the Chamberlain's Men's play scripts. It was only after the name was out that “revised” plays began to appear which were published not so much for the 6l. a piece but for legacy.


1By “boys of Blackfriars,” here, I refer to the combined Children of the Chapel and Children of St. Paul's who acted at Blackfriars between 1580 and 1584. The Children of the Chapel were forbidden to act any longer in 1584. But the combined boys very briefly managed to continue under the guise of Boys of the Earl of Oxford.

2Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward De Vere was Shake-speare: at long last, the proof (2013, 2017). 244-5. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/

3Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal (2021). 85-6, 97. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096GSQV14

4Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “William J. Rolfe vs. the Orthodoxy on Shakespeare's Pericles”. Virtual Grub Street, November 29, 2021. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2021/11/william-j-rolfe-vs-orthodoxy-on.html

5Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “D— W— R— and Pericles as Tudor Theatrical Revue”. Virtual Grub Street, September 16, 2023. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2023/09/d-w-r-and-pericles-as-tudor-theatrical.html

6Stelting, Michelle Elaine. Redating Pericles (2015). Also floats the idea: “The two seemingly distinct styles in Pericles are often currently considered to be evidence of collaboration between Shakespeare and Wilkins, but it is also possible that the play was written when the language of the first two acts was current and fashionable, and then subsequent revisions updated the language of the final three acts.” Gilvary, Kevin. Dating Shakespeare's Plays (2010) mentions the earliest possible date but does not take a position on the matter.

7Chettle, Henry. Kind-Hart's Dream (1592). Percy Society ed., 1841. “With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted,... the other whome at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had,... myselfe haue seene his demeanor no lesse ciuill than he exclent in the qualitie he professes: besides, diuers of worship haue reported his vprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writting, that aprooues his art.” It is my theory that Peele was go-between for the manuscript pages contributed to the group's effort by a mysterious person identified only by the moniker “Shake-Speare”.




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Saturday, November 30, 2024

Dennis McCarthy: “In order to expose the fallacy...”

Shakspere doodles waiting for the post.
[All McCarthy quotes are hyperlinked to their sources] 

Not long ago, now, Dennis McCarthy opined on his North/Shakespeare Facebook Discussion Group that:

In order to expose the fallacy of a belief, one must expose the weak spots.

This was said to a group member whose theory he had repeatedly bluntly dismissed. It sometimes happens that Dennis is simply right about something and this was one of those times... sort of. Sort of I say because his words were so utterly bereft of self-awareness.

Over on my own Edward de Vere was Shakespeare Group Dennis is openly insulting and discharges a spew of vague misinformation like so much squid ink should his theories be questioned in the least. What he almost never does is present legitimate counterevidence.

Presented with outweighing evidence that contrary to his claim that passages in Henry VIII were taken from Thomas North's dairy the passages in question were taken instead directly from Thomas Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, I received the following (and more like it).

Notice Gilbert is straight stealing from my academic book on the subject?

He had presented his argument accompanied by comparison of North's dairy and the play in parallel columns. I countered by expanding those columns, comparing Cavendish instead with the play to show the exact, direct matches to Cavendish. Having no answer, he abruptly changed the subject, declaring this method was “stealing”. Elsewhere on the same topic:

You are pretending you found something that you didn't find, plagiarizing my own work without attribution, and misleading your readers about what it entails.

Dennis had done a Cavendish to Henry VIII comparison in a book he has written on the North diary and claimed that my having made my own substantially different Cavendish to Henry VIII columns, in a separate matter, was plagiarism. Again, abruptly changing the subject.

It is a Dennis McCarthy signature move: unable to respond with facts he replies with vague misinformation in support of the worst kind of broad accusations he can think of. It's a social media comment, after all. Who's going to be able to fact check it? Or going to want to invest the time?

Dennis has claimed that his method, having “a greater degree of certainty than DNA analyses,” has found that Shakespeare wrote the book blurb for the play Arden of Faversham. I provide as sample from my argument:

It is common knowledge, however, that playwrights sold their manuscripts to playing companies. Upon payment, the companies had total rights over the manuscript. They recopied it and often edited it. We have a modest number of surviving manuscripts (a very few in the original author's hand) and none of them exhibits subtitles of any sort.1

Here Dennis went to another of his signature misinformation moves. He posted a picture of the title page of a hand-written book:

Gilbert Wesley Purdy, writes "We have a modest number of surviving manuscripts (a very few in the original author's hand) and none of them exhibits subtitles of any sort." Well, you're lying  yet again.

Ooops! He forgot to mention I specified playbooks. That didn't suffice for his needs, however, so he put more convenient words in my mouth and refuted them instead with a war whoop. The example he presented was a hand-written pamphlet of an essay on Rebels and Rebellion. Neither a play nor purchased by playhouse nor printer. At least he got the fact right that a liar was afoot.

Careful to take every opportunity to mention one of his products he included yet another glaring problem with his theory.

Regarding the length of time North had to write the play, had he read “North by Shakespeare,” he would know that North actually wrote the original in the 1550s.

In order to make the play fit Thomas North he had had to declare it was written in 1550. But the play is in iambic pentameter. As far as history is concerned, the first English play ever in iambic pentameter, Gorboduc, was written and performed circa 1561. I pointed out that Dennis was claiming that Thomas North — a playwright (in Dennis's world) without a single acknowledged play to his name — in fact wrote the first English play in iambic pentameter. I asked for clarification and have yet to receive any.

“Liar,” “a lie and you know it,” “he knows he is lying,” “misleading your readers,” “plagiarist,” “strait stealing,” “tremendous breach of conduct,” “inability to fairly describe... is almost pathological,” “another obvious falsehood,” “a willful disregard for the truth,” “routinely posts things he knows are false, is unambiguously contradicted, and keeps posting the same lies. It's seriously disturbing.” On one occasion when even this spew was not enough, it seems, he ended with “Q.E.D.”.

These are perfectly representative of Dennis McCarthy's "replies" to having the manifold failures of his theory, as it stands, pointed out. And this is what he makes of his replies:

Gilbert is one of the few commentators who repeatedly posts falsehoods – after they have been proved false to him.

He literally states that such blatant insults — and such insults alone — “prove false” the observations to which they purport to respond in comment threads! To be clear, they are not scattered among precise, demonstrable facts of any kind (DNA claims notwithstanding). They are mixed, at best, with vague sweeping generalizations to the effect that he is irrefutably right... which is clearly proven by the fact that he is... um... irrefutably right. And, thus, for any honest, sane person, the matter should be at an end.

I've said /written it before. Dennis has pursued his plan to corner the niche market of Shakespeare Authorship as a marketing problem. From his George Michael designer stubble and broad smile perched atop a muscular build, his tales of professional Frisbee career tragically cut short by injury, to his ability to talk the talk about just about anything with absolute confidence, he displays charisma that would give Elizabeth Holmes a run for her money.

Dennis is always on the lookout for contacts whose credentials he can coöpt. He has given 82-year-old June Schlueter, a Professor Emerita of Dramatic Performance, the opportunity to add entries on her Curriculum Vitae, and to participate in major new areas of interest, at an age when most people would be wistfully trying to hold onto the old. Add to this that he also mentions that she gives her name to his efforts at any moment he feels the need to present his credentials. He has managed to convince a journalist with connections at the NYT and elsewhere that his story would make an interesting book. The result being major press coverage by non-experts who haven't the slightest expertise to fact check any authorship statement he makes.

But walking the walk, on the other hand, is proving to be far more difficult than expected. (It's only Tudor history, after all!) There are all kinds of things to know and everything has come so easy to him in life that he hasn't built up any other skills than to vogue.2 Failing that... to trash talk like the old Frisbee days.

It would appear Dennis is well on his way to achieving his goal of reducing it all to a marketing formula and staying in character. Or would it?

In order to expose the fallacy of a belief, one must expose the weak spots.




1 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley Purdy. “Book Advertising in Tudor and Stuart Times: Title Pages.” Virtual Grub Street, May 4, 2024. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2024/05/book-advertising-in-tudor-and-stuart.html


2Ladies with an attitude
Fellas that were in the mood
Don't just stand there, let's get to it
Strike a pose, there's nothing to it. (Madona)

Presumably, he cannot sing or we would not have to deal with this.




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Saturday, November 16, 2024

Lord Burghley to Sir Robert Cecil. December 2, 1594. The Wedding of Elizabeth de Vere.

I thank you for sending to me the copy of her Majestie's letters to the French Kyng, assuring myself that there could no such marye come out of any knuckles but of hers that in all graces by nature, by calling, by long experience, is of such perfection as none can attayn unto. In this letter, though I knolledg my weaknes to judg therof, yet I see every sentence full of matter of great vallue, in a princely kyndness to a Kyng very acceptable, in congratulating his escape very comfortable, in advising him how to preserve his person more carefull than she is for herself, otherwise than she leaveth all to the care of God, in advise further to remove the nursery of his common enemies, without relenting to contrary counsells, so wisely and religiously, as of all these thyngs I am sure no secretary nor orator could so lyvely express her princely mynd.

For her hope to have me dance, I must have a longer tyme to leran to go, but I will be ready in mynd to dance with my hart, when I shall behold her favorable disposition to do such honor to her mayd, for the old man's sake. I wish her Majesty would send some treasure into Irland, and that her Treasurer might see to the orderly expence therof better than his clerks have done these six yeres.

Your loving father,

W. BURGHLEY.

The argument of my letter hath tempted my hand to wryte thus much.1

Our source informs us that this letter alludes “to the preparations for the marriage of Lord Burghley's granddaughter, Elizabeth Vere, eldest daughter of Anne Countess of Oxford, with William Earl of Derby.” Robert Cecil is managing the Treasury more and more as Burghley's “gout” keeps him more often and longer abed.2 He exchanges frequent letters for his father's advice and approval on key topics. Personal matters lighten the fare. For this reason we can look over the shoulders at the daily lives of the major players in Queen Elizabeth's Court.

Here we learn that the Queen has sent her regards, through Robert's previous letter, teasing the decrepit Burghley that she expects to see him dance at the wedding. His heart, he replies, will dance because the Queen will be greatly honoring the wedding with her attendance. Such small (and sometimes not so small) tokens of affection regularly pass between them at this point in their lives, Burghley working remotely from his house on the Strand (occasionally in the country, at Theobalds) and the Queen in whichever of her palaces she has chosen to reside.

Another letter to Burghley has taught us that the Earl of Derby had proposed to Elizabeth Vere in May of the year.3 The formal betrothal was also postponed — in this instance until June.4 The authorship implications of Derby's various situations are largely unrealized as of yet, three of which gave us plays by Shakespeare.

Yet several other letters between Robert Sidney and his wife inform us that the wedding was planned for January 19, 1594/5, and, for some reason, postponed to exactly a week following.

By January 26: Preparations for the marriage of the Earl of Derby. The marriage was originally to have taken place on January 19. Sir Robert Sidney, Jan 9, Greenwich, ‘to my most dear wife, the Lady Sidney’: ‘I cannot possibly be with you till after my Lord of Derby’s marriage, which will be on Sunday come sennight [Jan 19]’; [January]: ‘My head is so full of a masque that the Queen and certain idle lords, my friends, have brought me into... This masque will be chargeable’; Monday [Jan 20]: ‘Sweetheart. Our masque is put off till Sunday next and the marriage also’. Sidney spent £500. [Hannay, 64-5].5

I have yet to discover the reason.

I have made it clear, in my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof6, that I subscribe to the theory that Edward de Vere wrote A Midsummer's Night Dream for the wedding reception. Stanley-ites assign it to the bridegroom, William Stanley, who they believe wrote the works of Shaksepeare. The partisans for each of the candidates for alternative authorship claim the play for their own.

What is particularly curious is that many traditional Stratfordian scholars, for some 200 years now, have asserted that Shakspere of Stratford wrote the play for the same wedding. Also that it was a masque or distinctively masque-like. Karl Elze provides just one of a number of excerpts to this effect in the New Variorum of the play:

... we feel throughout the play that like the masques it was originally intended for a private entertainment. The resemblance to the masques is still heightened by the completely lyrical, not to say operatic stamp, of the Midsummer Night's Dream. There is no action which develops of internal necessity, and the poet has here, as Gervinus says, ' completely laid aside his great art of finding a motive for every action.' ... In a word, exactly as in the masques, everything is an occurrence and a living picture rather than a plot, and the delineation of the characters is accordingly given only with slight touches...7

There is a strong possibility, then, that Sir Robert Sidney danced in the first performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream while the Earl of Oxford, Baron Burghley and the Queen looked on. Or did Oxford, perhaps, participate as well?



1 Queen Elizabeth and her times, II. 440-1.

2 See my “What caused the death of William Cecil, Baron Burghley, in 1598?” Virtual Grub Street, August 06, 2023. https://vgs-pbr-reviews.blogspot.com/2023/08/what-caused-death-of-william-cecil.html

3 Titherley, A. W. Shakespeare's Identity: William Stanley, 6th Earl Of Derby (1592). 24. “...on 9th May the Countess Alice wrote a letter to Sir Robert Cecil, Elizabeth’s Uncle, sarcastically wishing his niece a better husband than William...”

4 Titherley citing Lafranc, Abel. Sous Le Masque de William Shakespeare (1919). The reason they give, however, is ludicrous.

5 Folgerpedia, 1595. https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/mediawiki/media/images_pedia_folgerpedia_mw/a/ab/ECDbD_1595.pdf citing The Letters (1595-1608) of Rowland Whyte, ed. Michael G. Brennan, Noel J. Kinnamon and Margaret P. Hannay (Philadelphia, 2013).

6 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/

7 Furness, Horace Howard. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: A Midsommer Nights Dreame (1895). Citing K. Elze (Essays, &c, trans. by L. Dora Schmitz, p. 32, 1874).



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