Oxfordian Shakespeare Data Page: Leopold's Plays of First Rhyming Period Revised to 2026.

I.-PLAYS OF FIRST (RYMING) PERIOD.

This is the first installment of a projected Virtual Grub Street series of Oxfordian Shakespeare Data Pages with an updated table from The Leopold Shakspere (1877). The Leopold is an exceptional source of information from the orthodox perspective up to the year of its publication. VGS will also be posting data from — and information about — other quality sources.

The intention is to provide a readily available collection of the best orthodox data together with modifications reflecting Oxfordian findings and my own research and findings. Those researches and findings reflect the work of others in the field, at times, and I will cite those works as I am aware of them. If I am unaware of the work of a predecessor I welcome reader comments informing me of the fact.

The Data Pages will include commentary. In particular, upon my reasons for modifying the orthodox claims and assignments. For just one example, the reader may note that I have added the lost Shakespeare play Love's Labours Won to the Leopold table above together with a composition date of 1585-6. In this instance, I must ask the readers' patience. I am presently in the process of writing my next monograph the which explains at considerable length how I have determined the likely date of composition, some portion of the text and other new findings relating to the text. A degree of reconstruction may prove to be possible in a future monograph.

Whenever space will allow, I will post both the original data tables together with my revised table.

Many readers will be aware of why I date the original version of the The Comedy of Errors to 1576. For those who are not, I repeat that the play The Historie of Error is recorded in the Revels Accounts, of Queen Elizabeth's court, to have been played on “Newyere's Daie at Night” of 1576.² There is another entry for A Historie of fferar³, played by the Servants of the Lord Chamberlain on “Twelveth Day at Night” of 1582. Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare's Plays

Orthodox dating has the play as first performed during the Gray's Inn Christmas festivities of 1594. The data table supports the idea that the play was earlier than the 1590s (or even than the mid-1580s) first by virtue of being much shorter than other Shakespeare plays. The high number of doggerel verses strongly further suggests mid-1580s or earlier yet. The table unfortunately does not break out the considerable number of fourteener couplets a reader will find from the count of doggerel verses. Fourteeners were completely outdated by the mid-1580s.

The high percentage of blank verse and feminine endings suggests a Shakespeare maturity consistent with a date during his middle period from 1590 to 1596. The only way these strong traits of the 1570s and 80s can be explained, in contrast to the clear traits of Shakespeare's middle period, is by the fact that the first version of the play was written in the 1570s — or early 1580s at the latest — and was heavily revised during the early- or mid-1590s. Close reading of the text itself only goes further to support this interpretation.

These seeming inconsistencies are even more pronounced in Love's Labour's Lost, and apparently for the same reason, though we do not have the advantage of a record of when either the original or the revised play appeared upon the stage. More time seems to have been put toward this rewrite than that of Errors, as many more fourteeners and Poulters measures have been transformed into prose and broken irregular rhymes. That (1) prose was so much the chosen form of the revision, that (2) the play borrows from Lyly's Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1581), and that (3) Lyly's highly popular prose plays established a trend of prose for plays from the early- to the mid-1580s, strongly suggest that the first, and perhaps only, revision occurred between 1582 and 1585 and included adding the famous references to the May of 1582 arrival of the Moscovite delegation to the English royal court. This date for LLL is consistent with the composition date of 1585-6 which I assign to Love's Labour's Won in my upcoming monograph.

Less well known, perhaps, is the reason to date A Midsummer Night's Dream to 1594 as opposed to Leopold's date of 1590-1. My own date of 1594 is well beyond the “First Rhyming Period” but I have chosen to leave the play in the first table, at least for the present, as being exemplary of certain challenges of interpreting raw data without considering context.

It has long been suggested — even by some orthodox scholars — that A Midsummer Night's Dream was the entertainment for the wedding, on January 26, 1594 [O.S.], of William Stanley, 6^th Earl of Derby, and Elizabeth de Vere, the eldest daughter of Edward de Vere, the 17 Earl of Oxford. Quite understandably, both Oxfordians and Derbyites welcome the considerable evidence each thinking their candidate was sure to have written the entertainment for such an occasion.

Among the evidence is a letter from Robert Sidney — the governor of Flushing, on leave back to England — to his wife.

My head is so full of a masque that the Queen and certain idle lords, my friends, have brought me into.⁴

This is also one of a number of pieces of evidence that A Midsummer Night's Dream is, in fact, a masque, as suspected by many orthodox scholars. In terms of the data, the form would explain the high percentage of songs and rhyme and the low percentage of enjambment and feminine endings. The letter would seem to be the only piece of evidence giving us the name of one of the participants in the masque. Sidney and the other “idle” lords would likely have been dancers rather than actors.

Edward de Vere was once known as an exceptional dancer. But that was before his serious wound in the groin area in a fray with Thomas Knyvet's and his retainers. Still, it seems likely that he, too, would have played some role in the production.

I get my upper date for the earliest version of Romeo and Juliet from its reference to Edward de Vere's Blackfriars tenant Rocco Bonneti.⁵ I get the lower date from the March of 1582 fray between Edward de Vere and Thomas Knyvet and their retainers.⁶ It is possible that the reference to Edward's “unworthy instrument,” in the furious January 19, 1585, letter to him from Thomas Vavasour, is to the first version of Romeo and Juliet.

I speak this that I fear thou art so much wedded to that shadow of thine that nothing can have force to awake thy base and sleepy sprites. Is not the revenge already taken of thy vildness sufficient, but wilt thou yet use unworthy instruments to provoke my unwitting mind?⁷

The author of the play being anonymous (a “shadow”) to the public could hardly prevent his identity from being rumored or confirmed.

I get my date for the earliest version of Richard II from the fact that it is manifestly a prequel to the play The Famous Victories of Henry the Fift by Edward de Vere.⁸ The Famous Victories was first played before 1588.⁹ The heavy use of couplets confirms that Richard II is likely to fall within the time window for a brief period of plays written in couplets, perhaps in reaction to George Peele's highly popular plays¹⁰ in that form, that followed the prose period of the early- and mid-1580s.

Edward de Vere's Ulysses & Agamemnon (1584)!

1Edward Hoby to Robert Cecil, December 7, 1595. Shakespeare Documented. Folger Library https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/richard-ii-first-edition

2Wallace, Charles William. Evolution of the English Theater with a History of Blackfriars (1912). 205. The word “history” was synonymous with story and tale applied to works of fiction at the time. The revels entry is confirmed by numerous sources. The claim that it was an earlier version of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors was first presented by Eva Turner Clarke in her groundbreaking book Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare's Plays: A Study of the Oxford Theory Based on the Records of Early Court Revels and Personalities of the Times (1931).

3Ibid. 209. The fferar is thought to have been a clerk's error for “of error”. By the orthography of the time, doubling the first letter of a word was a common form of capitalization.

4 Folgerpedia, 1595. 3. 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). January 19, 1594 [O.S.].

5See my Capulet, Capulet and Paroles: Edward de Vere's Biography in the Works of Shakespeare (2020). https://www.amazon.com/Capulet-Parolles-Shakespeare-Shakespeare-Progress-ebook/dp/B08LLDM91P/

6While Romeo slew Tybalt in the play, it was Edward de Vere who was seriously injured in the actual fray.

7This modernized spelling transcription comes from Nina Green's exceptional Oxford Authorship site citing BL MS Lansdowne 99/93, ff. 252-253 http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/BritishLibrary/BL_Lansdowne_99-93_ff_252-3.pdf

8See my “Shakespeare’s King Richard II as Prequel,” Virtual Grub Street, August 06, 2018. http://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2018/08/shakespeares-king-richard-ii-as-prequel.html

9See my Edward de Vere's Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff (2017). 12-14.

10The Arrraignment of Paris (1584) and The troublesome raigne of John, king of England (c.1585), in particular, the latter of which Shakespeare is generally reputed to have provided a small portion. This would place Shakespeare's own couplet-heavy histories, King John (c.1587) and Richard II (c.1588), immediately after his editing of Peele's couplet history troublesome raigne.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• On the Possibility that Edward de Vere and Shakspere of Straford Shared a Beer in Southwark. February 9, 2026. "The Earl of Oxford would have taken this route in 1575, as would Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne,"
• Du Bartas – Dinosaurs = Shakespeare's Gaunt Speech in Richard the Second. November 30, 2025. "After quite some time it was discovered that one John Eliot's French lesson book Ortho-epia Gallica included..."
• Sonnet 130: Shakespeare's Reply to a 1580 Poem by Thomas Watson. September 7, 2024. “Interesting to see our Derek Hunter debating with Dennis McCarthy, at the North group,...”.
• Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”

• Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

• Check out the V.G.S. Oxfordian Shakespeare Poetry Page for many poems by Shakespeare together with historical context.

Introduction to Shakespeare's Family

This being the Introduction to the first of a series of Free Online Monographs, it will be a bit more at-large. The immediate subject is Shakespeare's Family. Edward de Vere being the author who went under the pen-name Shakespeare, there will be a great deal to say in this and all of the subjects of all the monographs.

William Shaksper, of Stratford-upon-Avon, will receive his own monograph, as is fitting given his historical role. The pen-name of the author of the plays, while sometimes written William Shake-speare, will generally be written without the hyphen, that sometimes appeared on the title pages of his works, for search engine reasons. When a quote contains the hyphen, it will be retained.

Documentary evidence of the remarkable correlation between the biography of Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, and key characters — generally, the central characters — of the plays of Shakespeare, will be cited in the end-notes to each section, including citations to my own numerous books and monographs. The reader is encouraged to check the citations him- or herself. She or he will discover that such evidence is plentiful. Much of it is available on the Internet.

I will not be including letters to, from or about Vere in the table-of-contents. To include them would make it ungainly. Instead, I will provide a single link to the Virtual Grub Street Edward de Vere Letters Index.¹ When a specific letter is the source of information provided in a monograph, it will be cited individually in an end-note. It may also be quoted in excerpt. Personal letters from Edward's correspondents are rare. Only two personal letters from his wife, Anne Cecil, and another from one Thomas Vavasour from among all of his correspondents, would seem to have survived, though his own letters refer to numerous correspondents.²

Readers are welcome to comment on the individual sections of each monograph, or the monograph as a whole, so long as they become a member (unfortunately called “Follower”) of Virtual Grub Street and comment in a civil manner. Sections will also be linked from the Edward de Vere was Shake-speare Facebook Group and from the Bluesky social media accounts, Virtual Vanaprastha and Shakespeare Ink, where comments are also invited on the same basis by members.

Virtual Vanaprastha will only link to a selection of the monograph sections. It will also post links to interesting items of political and economic news, to my contemporary book and media reviews, and to my work in general literary history, philosophy, cultural anthropology and Information Theory.

II.

The history of Edward de Vere's family members is little known. More than a few are subjects of the Sonnets of Shake-speare.³ Edward married Anne Cecil, the daughter of his warder, William Cecil, in December of 1571. It was a grand affair even for a noble wedding. The most powerful commoner in England, Cecil had been raised to the baronage (Baron Burghley) immediately prior, as reward for being Queen Elizabeth's most trusted advisor, and in order that Anne should be of sufficient rank to marry an earl.

Edward refused to set up housekeeping with his wife in favor of continuing residence in chambers at the royal court as the queen's favorite. Elizabeth herself seems clearly to have preferred the arrangement as she glowered upon William Cecil's wife, Mildred, when she complained about it.

Husband and wife did spend enough nights together that Anne was pregnant in 1575. As she expected, for reasons not entirely clear, Edward declared that the child was not his. He returned from a year long trip to Italy to take up lodgings with a friend from which he frequently attended at court.

Edward brought back scented gloves as a gift for the queen. They immediately became the rage of fashion among noble women. His dancing already greatly impressed the queen and her ladies. His “sweet” sonnets had already passed among fellow courtiers for some years. His performance in tournaments was unmatched. He was the heart-throb of the court. His sonnets encouraging the queen to marry and produce an heir to the throne began around this time.

On the more substantial side, he had sent back a great many books from the booksellers of the Frankfort Fair and of Paris and Venice. His favorites were the French and Italian novellas. He was already fluent in French and Latin. His time in Italy went a long way toward fluency in Italian.

Edward became smitten with Anne Vavasour, a fiery lady-in-waiting to the queen. He would write her equally fiery sonnets that we now know as the Dark Lady Sonnets. In 1581, she would deliver their infant son.

Furious, the queen imprisoned Vavasour in The Tower. Realizing his danger, Edward went into hiding. Eventually, he negotiated a return with the agreement that he would be placed under house-arrest while his fate was being decided. His punishment consisted of a token stay in The Tower followed by exile from court until he would agree to set up housekeeping with his wife. Upon her release, Vavasour was also exiled from court. Her biography, from the point of becoming Edward's mistress, is also a remarkable one of boldness and historical importance. She was a feminist centuries before there was any such thing.

There are surviving letters in which his wife, Anne de Vere, pleaded with Vere to be taken back.⁴ There were clearly replies but all that would seem to have survived of them were the accompanying Shakespeare Sonnets #35 & 120.⁵ With their proper context restored, they inform us of a great deal. The two did finally establish a household, in 1583.

III.

This being an introduction, we jump to a few key facts as to how Edward de Vere's family was intimately involved in the publication of the Shakespeare First Folio. There is a great deal more family information that occurred before and after the Folio, and the table-of-contents to this monograph links to sections presenting this information.

William Herbert, the 3^rd Earl of Pembroke, the brother of Vere's son-in-law, Philip, was the W.H. who collected the sonnets and to whom they were dedicated.⁶ He wrote a letter, as Chamberlain to King James I, forbidding any further publication of Shakespeare works,⁷ when an independent publisher had begun assembling a collection of his plays. Immediately thereafter work began on what we now know as the Shakespeare First Folio. A little more than a year later, the completed First Folio was dedicated to him and Philip.⁸

In earlier years, William Herbert had declared that he did not wish to marry. His parents and Edward de Vere's father-in-law, William Cecil, the Baron Burghley, contracted for him to marry Edward's daughter, Bridget, anyway. Edward wrote to Burghley that he was pleased with the arrangement. Herbert refused, however, saying that the financial terms of the contract were not sufficient.⁹

With these sample facts to begin to introduce the role of Edward de Vere's family in his life and Shakespeare's works, I invite you to explore the free monograph Shakespeare's Family as the mood strikes.

1English Renaissance Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. https://gwponlinebibliography.blogspot.com/2020/12/english-renaissance-letters-index.html

2There may well be other letters to Vere yet to be cited. In particular, among the Lansdowne MSS. The search goes on.

3 SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS. Neuer before Imprinted (1609).

4Ward, B. M. The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (1928). 226-7. Citing Lansdowne MSS., 104. 63, 64. Ogburn, Carlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare (no date, 1984). 649.

5Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward De Vere was Shake-speare: at long last, the proof (Digital 2013, Paper 2017). 93, 136. https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Vere-was-Shake-speare-proof/dp/1543136257/

6The dedication was by the publisher as Vere himself had been dead for some 5 years.

7The injunction was against publishing any plays written for the King's Men company (formerly the Lord Chamberlain's Men) in order to avoid awkward questions.

8Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere was Shake-speare: at long last the proof. Introduction. https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Vere-was-Shake-speare-proof/dp/1543136257/

9Purdy. Edward de Vere was Shake-speare, 242, 258. https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Vere-was-Shake-speare-proof/dp/1543136257/

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• On the Possibility that Edward de Vere and Shakspere of Straford Shared a Beer in Southwark. February 9, 2026. "The Earl of Oxford would have taken this route in 1575, as would Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne,"
• Du Bartas – Dinosaurs = Shakespeare's Gaunt Speech in Richard the Second. November 30, 2025. "After quite some time it was discovered that one John Eliot's French lesson book Ortho-epia Gallica included..."
• Sonnet 130: Shakespeare's Reply to a 1580 Poem by Thomas Watson. September 7, 2024. “Interesting to see our Derek Hunter debating with Dennis McCarthy, at the North group,...”.
• Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”

• Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

• Check out the V.G.S. Oxfordian Shakespeare Poetry Page for many poems by Shakespeare together with historical context.

The Will of Elizabeth Dowager Countess of Oxford, Proved 15 Feb. 1612 [O.S.].

St. Augustine Church, Hackney, 1797.

Among the most informative historical documents from any era are wills and testaments. The will of Elizabeth de Vere née Trentham, the second wife of Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, is no exception.

From it we learn that the countess was struggling to pay her bills. Likely, it is the reason she requests a small private funeral.

I joyfullie committ my bodie to the earth from whence it was taken desiringe to be buried in the Church of Hackney wthin the Countie of Middlesex, as neare unto the bodie of my said late deare and noble lorde and husband as maye bee and that to be done as privately and with as little pompe and ceremonie as possible may be.¹

She did still have some personal wealth, as we learn in the body of the will, and she prefered to use it to honor outstanding debts and to give bequests.

We also learn that her husband had been buried in what she refers to as “the Church of Hackney,” and history knows as St. Augustine Church of Hackney, without a proper tomb.² Church records show that he died June 24, 1604, and was buried on July 6 following. The one special expense she does direct is that they be buried in a proper tomb.

Onlie I will that there bee in the said Church erected for us a tombe fittinge our degree and of such chardge as shall seem good to myne Executors...³

It would seem to be clear that her husband, who had technically died intestate,⁴ was buried within the church chancel but without a formal tomb. This may also have been the case in order to leave the countess and their young son what resources were left of the earldom of Oxford.

The countess and her 11 year old son, Henry, the 18^th Earl of Oxford, were left with some considerable property upon Edward's death, as royal gifts, patents, etc., were not attachable for debts of a decedent. For this reason, we learn to what most of the remaining gifts amounted. Foremost was possession of Hedingham Castle, the hereditary seat of the Earls of Oxford⁵:

I have devised leased graunted bargained and sould to the said Sr Edward Moore Frauncis Trentham and John Wright all that the great Parke of Hedingham ad Castrum aforesaide and certaine partes and parcells of the Castle Parke and the little Parke there as alsoe the Scite and precincte of the late Priorie there and all the landes Tenementes and hereditaments to the same late belonginge and appertagninge And alsoe the Rectorie or parsonage of Water Belchampe wthin the said Countie of Essex To have and to hold to the said Sr Edward Moore Frauncis Trentham and John Wright their Executors Administrators and Assignes from the feast of St. Michaell the Archangell nowe last past untill the full end and terme of Twentie yeares from thenceforth next ensuinge by and under certaine yearlie Rentes as in and by the saide severall deedes indented more fullie and plainelie maye appeare which saide severall deedes were soe by mee made in trust thereby to enable them to raise such sommes of money as should sufficientlie serve and suffice to dischardge and paye all my debtes and legacies and funerall expences as alsoe all such other paymentes and disbursementes⁶

The rents and other deeds, indentures, etc., had been awarded to Edward's daughters, as part of a deal to settle his debts to the crown, in order to support them after the death of Edward's first wife, Anne de Vere née Cecil.

Elizabeth, having a good head for economy, bought out the daughters' interest in 1609, such that Henry could have back his prime hereditary possession. But she had had to borrow considerable amounts, in the meantime, to keep up even a minimum of appearances and of a noble quality of life. She apparently had already signed the 20 year lease over the property and associated emoluments some five months before her death.

Upon her passing, Henry and his heirs would still be legally in possession, and would receive (presumably favorable) rents from the new leasees, but the payments from the tenants and the rights of usufruct, etc., would go to the leasees. After 20 years, Henry or his heirs would be free to lease again or to take full possession.

Edward de Vere's Ulysses & Agamemnon (1584)!

Henry would never recover full possession as he died in the Netherlands campaign of 1625. He was seriously overweight and suffered heat stroke during a battle on a hot day. He died some weeks later.⁷

Neither did his heirs inherit. As he had only married his second cousin, Lady Diana Cecil, a year-and-a-half before, much of which he spent serving the Netherlands campaign, he fathered no heirs, and, for all his mother's deft arrangements, the earldom and Hedingham passed to another branch of the Vere family.

Elizabeth's will also gives bequests to her servants.

Item I give to Margerie flower my wayting woeman my tawney satten gowne I give to Marie my chambermaid one other gowne at the discrečon of myne Executors I give to the said Margerie flower X^li [ten pounds] and to the said Marie my my (sic) chambermaid five poundes And to the said Margerie and Marie equallie to bee devided betweene them all my wearinge lynnen about my bodie I give to my Laundrie maide fortie shillinge [twenty shillings = 1 pound] To Katherine Three poundes To Gallantyne the Frenchman that serveth me five poundes To (sic) Thoroughgood five poundes To Thomas my Taylor dwelling wth mee five markes To Thomas my coachman five markes To John Bill my late servant five poundes⁸

We learn that even on an excruciatingly tight budget, a countess needed eight servants. The live-in tailor, however, might have been an extravagance.

Beyond clothing, amounts of money were bequeathed that might seem disappointingly small. Until we realize, that is, that a pound was worth some 300 times what it is worth today.

One other servant received a unique bequest:

Item I give unto my dombe man yearelie duringe his life (sic) powndes to be paide him by my Executors quarterlie at the foure most usuall feastes of the yeare by even and equall portions.⁹

This “dumb” (i.e. “silent”) man is thought, by Oxfordians, to have been William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon. I have stayed away from the subject, all these years, until recently having come upon evidence that all but proves it to be the case. I expect to be announcing it in my upcoming book.

1Ward, B.R. The Mystery of “Mr. W. H.” (1923). 99-100.

2See my ““In this uncarued marble”: Shakespeare’s Tomb”. Virtual Grub Street, Oct. 31, 2021. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2021/10/in-this-uncarued-marble-shakespeares.html

3Ward, 100.

4Royal gifts in the possession of a nobleman were bequeathed by law and custom regardless of a will or lack thereof.

5See my “Hedingham Castle Fact Sheet with Virtual Tour Link.” Virtual Grub Street, Jan. 20, 2019. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2019/01/hedingham-castle-fact-sheet-with.html

6Ward, 104-5.

7See my "Desperately Seeking Bridget (de Vere)" Virtual Grub Street, August 24, 2014. 21-2. Citing The Fighting Veres (1888) by Clements Markham @ 427-8.  

https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2014/08/desperately-seeking-bridget-de-vere.html

8Ward, 102-3.

9Ibid. 103.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• On the Possibility that Edward de Vere and Shakspere of Straford Shared a Beer in Southwark. February 9, 2026. "The Earl of Oxford would have taken this route in 1575, as would Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne,"
• Du Bartas – Dinosaurs = Shakespeare's Gaunt Speech in Richard the Second. November 30, 2025. "After quite some time it was discovered that one John Eliot's French lesson book Ortho-epia Gallica included..."
• Sonnet 130: Shakespeare's Reply to a 1580 Poem by Thomas Watson. September 7, 2024. “Interesting to see our Derek Hunter debating with Dennis McCarthy, at the North group,...”.
• Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”
• Source Texts: The Last Will and Testament of Elizabeth de Vere, Dowager countess of Oxford (1612). The complete text of the 1612 Will.

• Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

• Check out the V.G.S. Oxfordian Shakespeare Poetry Page for many poems by Shakespeare together with historical context.

From Shakespeare to AI: A Midsummer Night's Nightmare?

Studying Shakespeare likely isn't high on your to do list. And studying can mean any number of things. Study what? Sources? Prosody? All those strange words and stranger usages? Booor-iiiing!

I can almost read your thoughts. “Nope. It was his job as an author to be accessible to a reader some 450 years later. And he failed. I can't make heads nor tails of it. And don't even talk to me about his portrayal of women or role in colonialism.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, his plays have a lot of sex jokes in them. Yadda, yadda, yadda, he invented a lot of words and sayings we use today. Whatever. Besides, aren't you one of those nut-cases who believes that the Earl of Oxford actually wrote the works? Why in the world would I want to read anything you write about 30-something plays and 100-and-some poems 400 years past their best by date?”

If anyone is still reading, after these introductory paragraphs, you're my potential audience. Even if you agree with their sentiment.

I've spent years doing research of all kinds. I am indeed a nut-case for knowing the details of any subject that interests me. I do a lot of deep dive. One of those subjects is Shakespeare. In the spirit of my years as a Navy nuke and a computer-based production systems engineer, I apply strict rational analysis to all of my studies.

Deep dive, as it regards Shakespeare, does not mean chasing conspiracy theories or detecting hidden ciphers. In fact, it frequently doesn't mean researching the Authorship Question at all. From my perspective, to know something real about the works of Shakespeare is to know something important toward Authorship. Let the chips fall where they may.

All of this said, deep dive is time consuming and crushingly hard work. In the matter of language alone — and it must be admitted that language is everything — I have painstakingly gathered together scores of physical and above 100 digital facsimile dictionaries. Add half that many again, encyclopedias. Almost as many of other detail-oriented close cultural anthropology studies, of engineering studies, of period cookbooks, of government and guild records, etc.

Upon transitioning to my dream position of hermit, I could only add a few books a year on any of my subjects. Shakespeare related studies, of the necessary depth, were so hard to come by, at an affordable price, or to find on area library shelves, that I pretty much despaired of pursuing the many leads I'd uncovered.

But then matters got considerably better. Libraries began selling large quantities of books from their stacks and donations in order to replace them with CDs, DVDs and computer terminals. They did not sell the popular novels (for which I have no use), but, rather, all of the boring books that no one ever took out — the classics in every field. They were chunked on long tables and sold for pennies on the pound. Fabulous tomes of knowledge were donated to thrift shops and sold for 5-25¢ a volume.

Suddenly, my various studies looked like they could move forward in a meaningful way — Shakespeare among them. Still, I could only be disappointed with the limitations of my resources. I was making headway but constantly jotting memoranda to my future (somehow still better resourced) self.

Then Google started its book digitization project. The Project Gutenberg, it seems, had first come up with the concept some 30 years before. The Internet Archive followed. Millions of digitized books were rapidly becoming available, going back to the end of the 15^th century.¹ The Internet was suddenly a wonder. 

My years of sheltering-in, with more books than I could read in a lifetime, on every topic of interest, had begun. With a little bit of help from the inter-library loan system the t's were being crossed and the i's dotted. With a little more from Blogger and Amazon Kindle, and the occasional paper-and-ink and digital literary journal, it was finding a modest readership.

I will spare us a recitation of the detriments that come along with the Internet, as well as the benefits. The very fact that none of us can afford to do without it is one such detriment. But that is the subject of another essay.

The most immediately threatening (detriment? benefit?), is the advent of Artificial Intelligence. It promises to create disruption like nothing else the human race has experienced before.

At first, I refused to use its services. But then the most basic of its services that are available now — its use as a super-powerful search engine, that responds to and answers queries in everyday language — was too tempting to resist. I now use it regularly to verify and/or expand my understanding of a wide range of topics, to remind myself of exact dates, etc.

Shakespeare studies have long now sent me down the rabbit hole of western languages as they were written in the Middle Ages through the 17^th century. It is a fascinating subject and truly a Shakespeare study. Whoever one might think he was, he clearly loved reading the Italian and French poetry and novellas of his day. As well as classical languages, he was well-read in Chaucer and Gower who wrote in middle English, Pierre de Ronsard who wrote in middle French. His strange, and much commented, depiction of the Greek heroes and the defeat of Troy, in the play Troilus and Cressida, prove to us that he had access and the ability to read Benoit Sainte-Maure's medieval french Roman de Troie (1160)² — obscure even in his day. The even more obscure Latin Chronicle of John Whethamstede, Abbot of St. Albans, is the only known source for some key details in Henry VI. Shakespeare ransacked the libraries of the Royalty, the nobility, the monasteries and the universities of his day in search of plots for his plays.

Edward de Vere's Ulysses & Agamemnon (1584)!

Many of the cherished dictionaries I have mentioned above specialize in one or another of the period languages of his sources. But, when I come upon a particularly knotty passage, for all I value their knowledge, the time it takes to extract that knowledge is often a matter of simmering frustration. I now merely type an entry such as “middle french domter” to remind myself that this word I constantly forget means “to tame or domesticate”.

In my recent essay on the carnival at Fontainebleau, in 1564³, the word “gaillarde,” repeated in works by Ronsard, clearly did not refer directly to the dance called the “galliard,” in english, but likely would tell me from what the name was derived. The AI query “middle french gaillarde” gave the result shown in the screen shot at the head to this essay: “lively, vigorous or brave”. My cherished Ancient French Dictionary was, for some reason, unaware of this definition but did offer:

GALER, galler, gualler, v., s'amuser, se réjouir, danser, faire la noce⁴

[to amuse onself, to enjoy oneself, to dance, to pass the night away]

On this occasion, AI's definition exactly fitted Ronsard's various uses in the works he wrote for the carnival. But the Ancient French Dictionary only covers through the 15^th century. Ronsard wrote in the 16^th. The contrast between the two may suggest the history and derivation of the name galliard.

At some point, I will return to research on the relation of Ronsard to Shakespeare or between the 1564 carnival and the play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Or perhaps between Whethamstede's Chronicle and the Henry VI plays. I am almost certain to save precious time by consulting AI about minor but nonetheless essential matters in ancient texts — and to consult my dictionaries when time allows or circumstance requires.

Has AI brought my guard down while it insidiously takes over the world? Perhaps I will ask it. I mean, it would tell me. Right?

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1Manuscript collections were eventually digitized but access largely retracted.

2See my variorum edition of Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584). https://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Agamemnon-Edward-William-Shakespeare-ebook/dp/B07JD7KM1T/ This is the play that was later expanded into Troilus and Cressida (1609) which first shows up in the famous Diary of Philip Henslowe, as Ulysses and Agamemnon, under the date of 1599.

3See my “Shakespeare and Catherine de Medici's Famous 1564 Carnival at Fontainebleau.” Virtual Grub Street, September, 23, 2026. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2026/09/shakespeare-and-catherine-de-medicis.html

4Dictionnaire L'Ancienne Langue Français et de Tous ses Dialectes du IX au XV Siècle (1885). IV.209.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare and Catherine de Medici's Famous 1564 Carnival at Fontainebleau. September 23, 2026. "Fontainebleau featured a massive pleasure garden, with a carved marble fountain, which would serve as portal to the magical world that had been prepared for the guests."
• On the Possibility that Edward de Vere and Shakspere of Straford Shared a Beer in Southwark. February 9, 2026. "The Earl of Oxford would have taken this route in 1575, as would Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne,"
• Du Bartas – Dinosaurs = Shakespeare's Gaunt Speech in Richard the Second. November 30, 2025. "After quite some time it was discovered that one John Eliot's French lesson book Ortho-epia Gallica included..."
• Sonnet 130: Shakespeare's Reply to a 1580 Poem by Thomas Watson. September 7, 2024. “Interesting to see our Derek Hunter debating with Dennis McCarthy, at the North group,...”.
• Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the V.G.S. Oxfordian Shakespeare Poetry Page for many poems by Shakespeare together with historical context.