Edward de Vere Birthday Backgrounder: April 12.

Today, April 12, is the birthday of Edward de Vere who would become the 17^th Earl of Oxford and the poet and playwright known as “Shakespeare”.  I take this opportunity to introduce him before he became Shakespeare through quotes from the first and from the most recent book I have written on the subject.

Edward De Vere was born April 12^th, in the year 1550, at Hedingham Castle, in Essex, to John De Vere, the 16th Earl of Oxford, and his second wife Margery De Vere (née Golding).  The Vere family was among the most powerful in England.  They had held the Earldom of Oxford and the ceremonial office of Lord Great Chamberlain (not the same office as Lord Chamberlain) for centuries.  John’s sister, Frances, had married into the even more powerful Howard family, making him the brother-in-law of Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, who introduced the 14-line sonnet form ending in a final couplet which Shake-speare would make so thoroughly his own that it is now called the “Shakespearean Sonnet”.  Surrey would also be the first to introduce the iambic pentameter as the standard meter of his later poems.[1]

He would become the Earl of Oxford following his father’s death in August of 1562.  Being a minor, he was taken under the wardship of the Queen.  As was  the established manner of dealing with wardship, she delegated her authority to her trusted First Secretary William Cecil.  Somewhat less the established manner, she gave the revenues from De Vere’s lands, during his minority, to her dear personal friend Robert Dudley.

We get a good look at De Vere as a Court wit and writer in the various appendices of my edition of his 1584 play, Ulysses and Agamemnon.  A writer of Court plays was decidedly not a professional.  It would have brought shame upon himself if he were to descend to a profession — especially the theater.

By 1584, however, De Vere’s inadvertent apprenticeship was almost at an end.  He writes still as a talented courtier but he has become something more than his fellows.  He has a strong talent, a special grasp of language, and a creative flight that is mounting higher with each new play.

A playwright emerges who shares traits with the mature Shakespeare but is also quite different.  He enjoys imagery from knightly tournaments.  He revels in the lists.  He knows the details of the rules of tournament combat, the trappings of the lists, the feel of the armor.  In fact, the combat in the play is actually a description of the events of a multi-day grand tournament.

 Second only to the tournament, he loves music.  He is certainly a musician himself.  The images of musical recreation are courtly, complex, knowledgeable down to fine detail.  Like Shakespeare, he has a particular love of hawking imagery.  For more private recreation he reads an impressive range of literature from Latin, French and English.  It is highly likely that he is at least familiar with Homeric Greek. He is fond of word-play based on Greek and Latin grammar.

Sex is often on his mind.  In the mouths of his low characters, he loves to joke about the stews and the venereal diseases that occupy them.  He takes a certain pride in knowing the cant.  The dangers of “the placket” are a matter of considerable interest and concern for him.

 In sum, the playwright is the portrait of a hardy courtier.  He values the medieval courtesies of chivalry and the early renaissance accomplishments of learning.  As so many commentators have realized over the centuries, he finds many of the characters in his play a deep disappointment on this level.  While they represent themselves as being chivalrous they are ready to throw off courtesy the minute it gets in the way of their self-interest.  Only Hector, Troilus and Ulysses are exceptions, only they consistently uphold the chivalric moral codes.[2]

But De Vere also spent lavishly.  So lavishly, in fact, that he nearly bankrupted his Earldom.  He had alienated (i.e. sold off) most of his lands.  Not only that but he had lost his special favor in the eyes of Queen Elizabeth by impregnating one of her ladies-in-waiting.

He bristled like the proud boar on his family crest at the least advice or correction regarding these matters.  He tried to recover his losses through risky investment, and a memorial of sonnets by which to recover the Queen’s affection, and, by the late 1580s, had to accept a bailout from the Queen which removed his control of nearly all of his lands and left him with an annuity of ₤1000 (roughly $300,000 in today's money).

No longer an enormously wealthy Earl, or a dashing courtier, it is at this point that De Vere took up the one thing remaining to him that gave him satisfaction.  Finally humbled before life — no longer able to make excuses — he reflected on the ways of the world and on his short-fallings and took up his pen.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.[3]

It was then that Shakespeare was born.

---

[1] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley.  Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof (2013).  1.

[2] Vere, Edward de.  Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584, 2018).  Gilbert Wesley Purdy, editor.

[3] Shakespeare Sonnet #29.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Shakespeare’s Barnacles.  March 3, 2016.  “Prospero will wake, he fears, before they can murder him, and will cast a spell on them.”
• Hedingham Castle Fact Sheet with Virtual Tour Link.  January 20, 2019. “The modern entrance to the keep is on the first floor by way of a stone stair, discharging through the W. wall, where a fore-building used to stand.”
• Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?  August 03, 2014. "In October of 1601 De Vere begins to complain of his health again in letters to his brother-in-law, Robert Cecil, who was representing him in certain legal matters at Court."
• Check out the Medieval Topics Article Index for many more articles about this fascinating time.
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time.