The Biography of Edward de Vere in Shakespeare's Henry Plays Plus a Conjecture or Two.

Those who have read my Edward de Vere's Retainer, Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff ¹ know that I attribute the anonymous play The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth to Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, the man who soon after began writing under the pen-name Shakespeare. As usual, traditional scholars claim the play was written by some earlier less talented playwright and later crafted by Shakespeare into The Chronicle History of Henry the Fift.

It is generally conceded that the play had to have been performed prior to September of 1588 due to the fact that Richard Tarleton referred to acting in it and he died in that month. The title page of the first quarto, published in 1598, indicates that the play was performed by the Queen's Majesty's Players² troop which was formed in 1583 and effectively disbanded in January of 1594. For reasons also provided in the Man Who Was Falstaff, and too long to include here, I assign the date of 1585 plus or minus two years.

As for declaring Vere the author, just two of those many reasons will have to make the point for present purposes. 1) The play opens with Prince Hal's company of roisterers — among which is the historical figure Sir John Oldcastle, baron of Cobham — committing a robbery of the King's receivers at Gads Hill. No record exists of Prince Hal (Henry V) being associated with any such thing. But there is a record of Edward de Vere's servants committing just such a robbery near Gads Hill. 2) The playwright is a great fan of the earls of Oxford. The Earl of Oxford of the time is portrayed as being the constant companion and courageous advisor of Henry IV. He is a constant presence on stage. The actual Earl, however, was an orphaned minor child under care miles away from the king. At Agincourt, in the play, he is given charge of the planting of the famous stakes — a task actually given to Thomas Erpingham. After the victory, he is present at the presentation of Princess Katherine to the victorious Henry V. The actual Earl had been ordered to turn back to relieve the English forces being laid siege at Harfleur.

Of course, Shakespeare carried over the robbery into his Henry IV, Part 1. He added much more theatrically and personally mature comic touches that do not exist in the original. All of the play is far better written. But the original play was well-written for 1585, and highly popular. The Elizabethan theater was rapidly undergoing a revolution. Styles were much cruder in the mid- and early-1580s — including the comic scenes. The style of plays grew vastly more sophisticated over a single generation — a generation that spanned the mere eleven-or-so years between The Famous Victories and Henry IV.

As for Henry's roisterers, in the Famous Victories, the character Derrick became the character Pistol in Shakespeare's The Chronicle History of Henry the Fift. Shakespeare having, in the meantime, grown in the habit of adapting historical chronicles, by the likes of Holinshed and Hall, to structure the central plots of his history plays, Sir John Oldcastle did not return until Henry IV, Part 1. His heirs, the Cobham family, strenuously objecting to him being portrayed as frequenting such company, attacked the play so successfully that the old knight was renamed Falstaff.³ As often happens in such wholesale revisions, the resulting script shows traces of Oldcastle still and a few of his biographical details are carried over into Falstaff.

I've shown that Shakespeare's original Henry the Fift, however, was actually written prior to the Henry IV plays.⁴ There was no Falstaff in it at all. The character Pistol played the role later transferred to Falstaff, in Henry IV, after which he was given a reduced role made up of leftover bits and pieces of the original Derrick character, in Famous Victories, and a small amount of new material. The Henry the Fift we know from the First Folio was likely a major revision of the original — the most popular and patriotic of the day — to play at the grand opening of “this Woodden O,”⁵ the Globe Theater, in May of 1599.

The labyrinthine history of the Henry plays has many aspects. The relationship to the life of Edward de Vere becomes even clearer if we recognize that Vere transferred his biography to Prince Hal (Henry V) because he identified with him. Hal was his hero. A considerable part of what is historical fiction in Henry the Fift is, it turns out, fact from Vere's own youth.

The range of correspondences is striking. And some is a bit more conjectural.

In The Famous Victories, Hal is constantly in the company of two characters: Ned (being the common nickname for Edward and Edmund) and Tom. In Henry IV Ned becomes Ned Poins. The name Poins is an alternative spelling of the surname Poyntz. The historical record shows no evidence that Henry V had among his friends anyone named Ned Poyntz. Tom lacks a surname thus cannot be verified. The assumption might then be that here again we have two close friends of the young Edward de Vere.

But neither do we know of a Ned Poyntz in Vere's biography and Tom has no surname. We might hope that future discoveries will resolve the question. Or perhaps the historical record already gives us at least a strong hint or two.

Young Edward de Vere grew frustrated that the Queen had not given permission for him to travel to the continent. In 1574, he left to the Netherlands anyway. It was the scandal of the day and a tutor from his younger days, Thomas Bedingfeld,⁶ was dispatched to bring him back.

Upon his return to England, the Queen was on her annual Progress. On this occasion she choose to progress to the city of Bristol. Her itinerary scheduled lodging at Acton Hall⁷, on the outskirts of the city, including August 13^th. The Hall had surely been preparing for weeks for the visit thrilled to host the Queen and her court.

Edward de Vere, in the meantime, had been ordered to attend the Queen. He and Bedingfeld departed London on August 5^th.⁸ On August 13^th, while at the Hall, the Queen's Council adjourned specifically regarding his matter.

Acton Hall was the seat of the Poyntz family — landed gentry, of long standing, who had risked a great deal in support of Elizabeth's claim to the throne. Far the two most common names in the family for some hundreds of years were Nicholas and Edward.

The second son of the reigning patriarch, Nicholas Poyntz, was named Edward. His wife was pregnant with that Edward, or had just delivered, at about the time of the Queen's visit. A week later, at Bristol, Vere was given an audience to receive his penance for his rash behavior. How many cousin Edward Poyntzs were present, at the time, to receive the Queen we cannot say.

Nicholas Poyntz's father, also named Nicholas, had a son by Joan Berkley, named Edmund. It was his third son.⁹ When Nicholas died, Joan married Sir Thomas Dyer, father of Edward Dyer the courtier poet. Edmund died in 1568, at the age of 28, in Paris, France. In 2 Henry IV, II.ii.64-5, Ned says: “the worst that they can say of me is, that I am a second Brother”.

As for the character Tom, until his final scene the reader can only wonder why he is in the play at all. His brief lines seem like padding at best. That final scene, however, brief as it is, tells us why he is in the play.

Hen 5. Ah Tom, your former life greeves me,

And makes me to abandon & abolish your company for ever

And therefore not upon pain of death to aproch my presence

By ten miles space¹⁰

As I have pointed out, in my Edward de Vere's Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff, shortly after having grown to the age to take control of his earldom Vere discharged Churchyard.

Falstaff, it may be remembered, was strangely in the habit of threatening to “have ballads” on persons who he felt had slighted him.

and I have not Ballads made on you all, and sung to filthie tunes, let a cuppe of sacke bee my poyson¹¹

Even noblemen like Henry's younger brother, Prince John of Lancaster, were not secure from the threat.¹²

Vere knew this from personal experience. Tom Churchyard published a poem about the dismissal that accused the young Earl of cruelly abandoning him knowing he was desperately ill and particularly in need of help.¹³

In the Famous Victories Vere seems only to have had time to refer to the event with a few lines. In Henry IV, he fully explains his side of the story and repeats the final scene.

King ...I banish thee, on paine of death,

As I have done the rest of my Misleaders,

Not to come neere our Person, by ten mile.

For competence of life,...¹⁴

Notwithstanding Churchyard's defamatory poem, it is clear from the Henry IV plays that Edward de Vere found Thomas Churchyard to be a fascinating character. There are signs that he and the old soldier may have worked together on at least one project after their war of words.

As long as we are at it, yet another character name was changed before the 1598 & 1600 quarto texts we have of Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2 were finalized. Again, hurried revision has left traces of him arranging for the Gads Hill robbery. He did not, however, appear in The Famous Victories.

His name is Sir John Rossill (Russell). John Russell, as it happens, was the name of the husband of Lady Elizabeth Russell, the sister-in-law of William Cecil, the 1^st Baron Burghley, who constantly wrote letters to Cecil complaining bitterly of Edward de Vere's behavior and his treatment of Anne his wife. In the years following Anne's death, in 1588, Lady Russell repeatedly lobbied to forbid their three daughters from being allowed unsupervised in Vere's vicinity.

Lady Russell was the wife of John, Lord Russell, heir to the Earldom of Bedford. She also complained bitterly when her husband, John, died before inheriting the earldom and she was forbidden to style herself the “Dowager Countess of Bedford”. She did so, anyway, and was fiercely protective of the Russell name. The slightest hint of disrespect was known to throw her into a state of apoplexy presumably shortening her life.

1Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere's Retainer, Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff (2017). https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Veres-Retainer-Thomas-Churchyard-ebook/dp/B077LVLXY2/

2 THE FAMOUS VICtories of Henry the fifth: Containing the Honourable Battell of Agin-court: As it was plaide by the Queen's Majesties Players. 1598.

3 A New Variorum of... The Second Part of HENRY THE FOURTH. Epilogue. “One word more, I beseech you: if you be not too much cloid with Fat Meate, our humble Author will continue the Story (with Sir Iohn in it) and make you merry, with faire Katherine of France: where (for any thing I know) Falstaffe shall dye of a sweat, vnlesse already he be kill'd with your hard Opinions: For Old-Castle dyed a Martyr, and this is not the man. My Tongue is wearie when my Legs are too, I will bid you good night; and so kneele downe before you:...”

4See my Edward de Vere's Retainer, Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff (2017). https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Veres-Retainer-Thomas-Churchyard-ebook/dp/B077LVLXY2/

5The Life of Henry the Fift (Folio, 1623). Prologue. l.13.

6Edward de Vere had arranged for the publication of Bedingfeld's Cardanus Comforte the year before, in 1573, and supplied a prose dedication. The Comforte has become known as “Hamlet's book,” as several Hamlet speeches are based upon it, or upon the original De Consolatione, by Hieronymous Cardanus. It is also the inspiration for Macbeth's “walking shadow” speech.

7Folgerpedia 1574. Citing Royal Treasury Records and Works Accounts. “Aug 13, Fri IRON ACTON, Gloucs; Sir Nicholas Poyntz. Iron Acton manor-house; owned by Sir Nicholas Poyntz (c.1528-1585), formerly an Esquire for the Body to the Queen; a widower in 1574. ‘After dinner the Council sat about the Earl of Oxford’. The Earl came before the Queen at Bristol, August 21.”

See also “THE POYNTZ FAMILY. By the Rev. H. L. THOMPSON, M.A., Rector of Iron Acton” (1879). Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, Vol. IV. (1879-80) 73-85.

8Folgerpedia 1574. Citing Nelson, 113, 115,. Citing letter of Lord Burghley to Sir Francis Walsingham, Theobalds, 3 August 1574 “‘He and Mr Beningfield departed this afternoon to London...to make him some apparel meet for the court’. The Earl left London on August 5.”

9Mclean, John. Historical and Genealogical Memoir of the Family of Poyntz (1886). 96.

10Famous Victories, IX.57-60.

11A New Variorum of... The First Part of HENRY THE FOURTH, II.ii.43-4.

12A New Variorum of... The Second Part of HENRY THE FOURTH, IV.iii.46-9.

13See my Edward de Vere's Retainer, Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff (2017). https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Veres-Retainer-Thomas-Churchyard-ebook/dp/B077LVLXY2/

14Variorum 2 Henry IV, V.v.71-4.

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.

• 

Shakespeare, the Earl of Pembroke and the First First Folios.

In the years that Shakespeare's new plays slowed to a trickle (the few there were co-written) — a.k.a. the years after 1604, the year Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, died, a.k.a. the years after William Shakspere chose to retire to his hometown of Stratford upon Avon to quietly live out the rest of his days as a dealer in grain — the playwright Ben Jonson and play-writing partners John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont were the big names in the field.

While Beaumont married a wealthy heiress and stopped writing professionally in 1613 — except for a single court masque — at least three of his plays, written with and without Fletcher, continued to appear in first edition quartos well after his death in 1616. Three more first appeared in print in the 1647 Fletcher and Beaumont First Folio.

Interestingly, the front matter of the Fletcher and Beaumont First Folio was closely modeled on the front matter of the Shakespeare First Folio. Both included dedications to William and Philip Herbert.

“To The Right Honourable Philip, Earle of Pembroke and Mountgomery¹... joyned with your (now glorified) Brother, Patrons to the flowing compositions of the then expired sweet Swan of Avon SHAKESPEARE”.²

The 37 congratulatory poems at the front of the Fletcher and Beaumont folio, however, were written by the biggest stars of the literary world of the day. Edmund (styled “Edw.”) Waller, John Denham, John Webster, Richard Lovelace, Thomas Stanley, Richard Corbet, Roger L'Estrange, Robert Herrick, James Shirley. Some had passed away since their commendations. All contributed their poems expressly as personal friends and/or professional admirers.

The unmistakable resemblance is more than a little likely due to the fact that the publisher of the Fletcher and Beaumont Folio was Humphrey Moseley. Moseley kept a constant eye open for works by Shakespeare that he could claim to have first published. His obsession, however, came to naught. He did, however, turn over a copy of the infamous The History of Cardenio — more likely by Fletcher and Philip Massinger — to another Shakespeare obsessive, William Devanant, who died in the midst of editing it. The plan appears to have been for Devanant's popular theater company to put on the play, as a work of Shakespeare, and Humphrey to publish after.

Moseley and his author, James Shirley, once playwright for the Queen Henrietta's Men, wrote the “Stationer to the Reader” and “Letter to the Reader” letters for the Fletcher and Beaumont Folio respectively. Moseley's includes a line that will bring a smile to those who know the Shakespeare First Folio well.

What ever I have seene of Mr. Flechers owne hand, is free from interlining; and his friends affirme he never writ any one thing twice: it seemes he had that rare felicity to prepare and perfect all first in his owne braine;³

It is just one of many instances, in every aspect of his business, that Moseley, like the proverbial American Indian, put every part of the buffalo to use.

The four congratulatory poems in the front of the Shakespeare Folio were written by journeymen who wrote for the press of Edward Blount and/or owed favors to Ben Jonson. Jonson himself — the protégé of William Herbert, the 3^rd Earl of Pembroke, brother to Edward de Vere's son-in-law, and one time fiancé to another of Vere's daughters — was the only major name to append his praise. He is also understood to have written most or all of the letters, in the front matter, attributed to John Heminges and Henry Condell, managers of the Globe Theater and the King's Men.

In sum, the Shakespeare First Folio was a production of Vere's family⁴ edited by Ben Jonson who owed them his status in English society and literature. He owed them, that is to say, any favors they might ask... or command. A mere four congratulatory poems appeared in the front matter of the First Folio, none by major writers, alive or dead, or by anyone who indicated personal knowledge of Shakespeare.

Speaking of Ben Jonson, he was intimately involved in the production of the first ever First Folio, published in 1616. Being a supreme self-promoter, it was a massive volume of his own works. Each individual play was published with a separate dedication to a major figure in the Royal court, in line with his reputation as a shameless social climber, fawning over members of the court and nobility.

Catiline was dedicated to William Herbert, the 3^rd Earl of Pembroke. The Alchemist was dedicated to Pembroke's mistress, Mary Wroth.⁵ A section of Epigrammes was also dedicated to Pembroke, calling on him for protection. Two epigrams were addressed to Wroth. One was addressed to Susan Herbert née de Vere, the Countess of Montgomery, who co-authored the novel The Countesse of Montgomeries Urania⁶, a landmark of women's literature, which appeared under the name of Wroth alone, Vere's husband being fiercely conservative. None appeared to Pembroke's wife who was persona-non-grata at the court and who did not show well in Worth's novel.

The volume had nine congratulatory poems, three by Francis Beaumont, who was presumably filling out space to spare his friend the embarrassment of having only seven. As the epigrammes make clear, Jonson did not get along well with most of his fellow playwrights and poets. His arrogance and social climbing featured in their poems and plays. The nine poems were from the biggest names of the time, including John Selden, George Chapman, John Davies and Beaumont himself. But the list is notably short.

History has noticed that the name of William Shakespeare does not appear in the Epigrammes — or anywhere in the Folio, at all — for which reason he has generally been declared to be the person addressed under the heading “To the Poet-Ape”. This is a result of scholars long having declared the early versions of Shakespeare's plays to have been written by others and taken over by him in order to explain how those versions could have been composed so early in the Stratford man's life and in pre-Shakespearean styles. The Poet-Ape, however, is virtually certain to have referred to Philip Henslowe, the dominant theater manager of the time, with whom Jonson had an ongoing feud.

1 William Herbert having died, Philip Herbert then held both the Earldoms of Montgomery and of Pembroke.

2 For more on this, see my essay “The Herbert Brothers' Other First Folio Dedication.” Virtual Grub Street, October 2, 2016. https://gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-herbert-brothers-other-first-folio.html

3 Comedies and Tragedies written by John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont, Gentlmen. (1647). No pagination.

4 See my Edward De Vere was Shake-speare: at long last, the proof. (2013 digital, 2017 paper) for more detail on this. https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Vere-was-Shake-speare-proof/dp/1543136257/

5 These dedications first appeared in the quarto versions of the plays.

6 For much more on this, see my Shakespeare's The Tempest: a Wedding Masque for Susan de Vere (2024). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CY5YYG1F

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.

• 

Romeo and Juliet Did Have a Balcony Scene After All.

In the October 2014 Atlantic Monthly magazine article “Romeo and Juliet Has No Balcony,”¹ we learn that the author “Lois Leveen is a historian and the author of the novels The Secrets of Mary Bowser and Juliet's Nurse.” From her bare bones loisleveen.com page, we are provided further detail.

A confirmed book geek, Lois earned degrees in history and literature from Harvard, the University of Southern California, and UCLA, and taught on the faculty of UCLA and of Reed College. Lois' work has appeared in the New York Times, the LA Review of Books, the Chicago Tribune, the Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic and on NPR, as well as in numerous literary and scholarly journals and in film and performing arts festivals.

She has an impressive resume even without counting her CV which I chose not to download from the page.

I find Ms. Leveen quite personable, with excellent pop culture presentation skills, and her article to present some interesting historical facts, even though her thesis is incorrect. That Thomas Otway's 1679 play, The History and Fall of Caius Marius, featured a balcony across which Lavinia and Marius delivered dialogue identical to what is generally called “the balcony scene,” in Romeo and Juliet, is a fact new to me, and, I suspect, to most readers. That the first written record of the word “balcone,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, occurred in 1618, documents an oft commented fact that no Shakespeare play contains the word.

As for Juliet being on a balcony during the balcony scene, several established historical facts make it all but inevitable. First, it should be remembered that the descriptive term “balcony” not being in use does not mean that balconies did not exist. Nearly all Elizabethan theaters had them, from the very earliest inn-yard theaters to the most developed formal playhouses. Surviving stage-directions “above,” “aloft,” and “on the tarras,” from the time, referred to the second-level balcony. “At the window” — referring to an upper-story window — would put the character on the balcony, or above it, if the theater was sufficiently large, at a window into the tiring house² (with or without attached balcony on a case by case basis).

Not only did the word “balcony” not appear, in English texts, until 1618, but playwrights only included the most basic stage directions in their manuscripts. This would, accordingly, be the case for playbooks published from them. If there were more at-large directions, in a source manuscript, it was a stage-manager's copy revised for a particular theater and/or performance. It was up to the stage-manager to arrange for some representation of, or substitute for, “the window”. It is difficult to imagine him putting Juliet at a tiny window on the third floor. Because of the distance involved, the tiring house windows and roof were generally used to depict castle ramparts noisily under siege and such.

And the balcony question does not end here. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was taken directly and indirectly from the Italian version by Matteo Bandello and the French translation of Pierre Boaistuau. The indirect influence of Bandello came from the young English poet, Arthur Brooke's The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet written first in Italian by Bandell, and now in Englishe by Ar. Br. (1562).

In Bandello no express mention is made of a balcony until the dawn during which Juliet looks out from her window before she takes the potion that will make her appear to have died. The reader is informed that the window looks out upon her balcony and the sunrise. This is the balcony that Bandello found in the earlier tale of Romeo and Juliet, by Luigi da Porto, from which he took his own. In Brooke, a young poet who may not have known what the word balcone meant, and at least did not think it worthy of mention, there is only a window.

While it is inconvenient that, in the case of Romeo and Juliet, so much of Bandello's novella was translated into Brooke's English translation, and into a prose translation by William Painter, Shakespeare's sources for many of his plays, were works only available in Italian at the time. In respect of this fact, Ms. Leveen's certainty that “Shakespeare didn't know what a balcony was” is misplaced. The evidence resoundingly shows that he was well-read in Italian literature, including Bandello, Boccaccio, Cinthio, Ariosto and many others. Balconies are a commonplace in the Italian literature of the period.

In other Romeo and Juliet matters, Masuccio Salernitano's 1476 novella of “Mariotto of Siena, beloved of Giannozza”³ is generally considered to have been the source rewritten to be the first known version of the Romeo and Juliet story — Luigi da Porto's 1530 “Newly Discovered Story of Two Noble Lovers”⁴ In Masuccio, Giannozza enters a convent, upon the death of Mariotto, where she refuses to eat, dying shortly thereafter. In Porto's tale, Juliet holds her breath until she can no longer and then lets it out with a great cry and dies.

There was another version between Porto's and Bandello's — a poem by Bandello's friend Gherardo Boldieri who took the female pen name, Clizia (a remarkable choice for the time). In Clizia's version Juliet's death is expressly by pinching off her nose and covering her mouth while hugging the dead body of Romeo until her breath bursts out. In Bandello, she simply wills herself to die.

The first version in which Juliet dies by stabbing herself with Romeo's dagger was Pierre Boaistuau's French translation from Bandello, in 1559. Brooke and Shakespeare both chose to follow his version in this instance.

Ms. Leveen has her information from the research for her historical novel Juliet's Nurse.

1Leveen, Lois. Atlantic Magazine. October 28, 2014. “Romeo and Juliet Has No Balcony” https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/romeo-and-juliets-balcony-scene-doesnt-exist/381969/

2A building at the back of the stage in which actors changed costume and theater properties were stored.

3 Massuoci Salernitanii Novellae (1476, 1874). “Mariotto senese, innamorato di Giannozza,” 358-368.

4 Porto, Luigi. Istoria Novellemente Ritrovata Di Due Nobili Amanti (1531).

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.

• 

Did Shakespeare Make Fun of Other Writers?

A friend recently asked me whether Shakespeare ever made fun of the work of other writers. The first thing I thought of was Falstaff taking on the style of Thomas Preston's Cambyses¹:

Falstaff.... I must speake in passion, and I will doe it in king Cambises vaine.

Prince. Well, here is my leg.

Falstaff. And here is my speech; stand aside Nobilitie.

Hostess. O Jesu, this is excellent sport i'faith.

Falst. Weepe not sweet Queene, for trickling teares are vain.

Host. O the father, how he holds his countenance?

Falst. For Gods sake Lords, convay my trustfull Queene,

For teares do stop the floudgates of her eyes.

Host. O Jesu, he doth it as like one of these harlotrie² plaiers as ever I see.

Falst. Peace good pint-pot, peace good tickle-braine.

Harrie, I doe not onelie marvaile where thou spendest

thy time, but also how thou art accompanied.³

Shakespeare next has Falstaff launch into John Lyly's Euphuistic style. Early on, Shakespeare was actually heavily influenced by Lyly's works but he chose not to allow serial “proverbs” to take over his plays.

For though the cammomill, the more it is troden on, the faster it growes, so youth the more it is wasted, the sooner it weares:

The point here is that the hoi poloi — “the pit,” in the jargon of the time — find such melodramatic bellowing to be the epitome of a good play and such proverbs to be the epitome of wisdom. Falstaff has enough education to manipulate his fellows and the Hostess has none at all.

The educated audience, in the boxes, consider such passages to be unintentionally comical. It is them for whom Shakespeare has written the scene.

While Cambyses is often and always the butt of Shakespeare parodies, others were often on the receiving end of both mockery and praise. Again, many lines from the plays of Lyly are too close to those of Shakespeare's early comedies Two Gentleman of Verona and Comedy of Errors to be coincidence. It is difficult, though, if not impossible, to determine which playwright took what from the other. That they were cross-pollinating is among the highest means of praise.

George Peele's The Battell of Alcazar was parodied in a line of the character Pistol, on much the same basis as Cambyses, in the same 2 Henry IV, But a look at Peele's play yields us the lines:

Moore. Villaine, a horse.

Boy. Oh my Lord, if you returne you die.

Moore. Villaine I saie, give me a horse to flie,

To swimme the river villaine, and to flie.⁴

Which are almost certainly the inspiration for the lines from The True Tragedy of Richard the Third, the first try at the theme, which also shows signs of Peele as co-writer:

King. A horse, a horse, a fresh horse.

Page. A flie my Lord, and save your life.

King. Flie Villaine, looke I as tho I would flie, no first shall this dull and scencelesse ball of earth receive my bodie cold and void of sence,...

Which is halfway to Shakespeare's solo effort, The Tragedy of Richard the Third:

Richard III. A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

Catesby. Withdraw, my lord; I'll help you to a horse.

Richard III. Slave, I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die:⁵

He has even substituted “slave” for Peele's favorite expletive “villaine” just as he did throughout, when he removed nearly every one of the many instances of the word, in the process of rewriting Peele's King John⁶ into the play we now attribute entirely Shakespeare.

Peele's play The Arraignment of Paris (1584) was a favorite of Edward de Vere and John Lyly who managed the Blackfriars theater during an historically important run from 1581 to 1584. It was acted, as most plays at Blackfriars, by the combined company of the Children of St. Paul's and the Children of the Royal Chappel.

The scholarly consensus has long been that his original King John shows signs that Shakespeare edited a modest portion of the play — like a theater manager might. Alcazar and King John may have been written for the Blackfriars just as it closed. After the theater was closed, Lyly became the dramaturge for the Children of St. Paul's and the plays may have first appeared there. Alcazar was purchased as a remainder by Philip Henslowe, perhaps because it was a play without a playhouse, and became the favorite play for many years, by any playwright except Christopher Marlowe, in the repertoire of the Admiral's Men company.

There are numerous ways, then, that Shakespeare honored Peele's work. Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, Christopher Marlowe's Dido and Tamburlaine: Shakespeare parodied their melodramatic style at its most exaggerated. Yet the player's speech in Hamlet may have been meant to honor Marlowe's Dido by competing with it, and he declared the death of Marlowe a great loss in the line “a great reckoning in a little room”.⁷

1Preston, Thomas. A Lamentable Tragedie of Cambises, King of Percia (1569)

2Malapropism for “harlequin”.

31 Henry IV, II.iv.

4Peele, George. The Batell of Alcazar (1594). Scholarly consensus is that this play was written circa 1589. It was extremely popular on stage and publication held off until 1594.

5The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (1597), V.iv. The play was written years earlier but was so popular on the stage that publication was held off.

6Peele, George. The Troublesome Reign of King John (1591). Shakespeare, William. The Life and Death of King John (first published in 1623 in the First Folio)

7As You Like It, III.iii.

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.

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