On the Question “Who knew Edward de Vere was Shakespeare?”

As I have presented in my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof[1] — and detailed more fully in my Capulet, Capulet and Parolles[2] —  Ben Jonson revealed in his play Poetaster that Edward de Vere was the man behind the name “Shakespeare” and Romeo and Juliet a highly stylized version of the 1581 Vavasour affair.  How many of his fellow playwrights knew is not so clear. Certainly, John Marston and Joseph (later Bishop) Hall did, as exhibited by Hall’s Labeo satire and Marston’s reply. There is a high degree of likelihood that Shakspere of Stratford-Upon-Avon did based upon Jonson’s depiction of him as Sogliardo, in Everyman Out of his Humour, being laughed down for pretending to merit the figure of a boar (the De Vere family totem) on his family crest.  There is also a high degree of likelihood that Thomas Nashe did. All said and done, there were surely dozens associated with the English court and London stage who knew or thought they knew more or less about the relationship between Vere and the name “Shake-speare”.

But how much more? How much less?

Claims have been made over the nearly two centuries since there have been public debates over the authorship of the works of Shakespeare. Most particularly over the past several decades. But, while the question deserves attention, theories have tended to be based upon the personalities of the persons making the claims.

Furthermore, because general readers tend to be attracted to theories in proportion to the degree of theatrical polish with which lurid and/or cloak-and-dagger aspects are expressed, the personalities who impress are those who are absolutely certain quite apart from the existence of evidence or lack thereof. Perhaps the most impressive of all are those who discover powerful, undeniable evidence in the lack of evidence. These people knew because they had to write in code. Those people knew because surely they would have, and, even more conclusively, the evidence that undeniably should exist that they did, doesn’t.

Joseph Hall knew that at least some of the works we now attribute to Shakespeare were written by an ignoble nobleman under a pseudonym. How many of the works we do not know. He like a number of others felt it best to leave that nobleman’s name unstated. Still, he found his works called in to be burned.

Under the name of “Ponticus” — a famous ignoble nobleman from the Eighth Satire of Juvenal — Hall says of the pseudonymous author:

Or if (O shame!) in hired harlot's bed

Thy wealthy heirdom thou have buried[3]

So this nobleman has wasted his estate. Was it for the sake of satire that it is said that he wasted it on drabs? Or was that what Hall had heard? Have we learned that was the word going around? Were prostitutes more a part of Edward de Vere’s expenses than we can verify now some 500 years later? Is the harlotry intended to describe amateur adulterous sexual activity as opposed to professional?

Like Edward de Vere, Ponticus has been to Venice and Rome.

Sith Pontian left his barren wife at home,

And spent two years at Venice and at Rome,

Returned, hears his blessing ask'd of three,

Cries out, O Julian law! adultery!

When Edward returned he denied the child his wife had just begun carrying as he departed England was his own. But, just as he was not gone  for two years but one, his wife did not give birth to two children but one. And the child was almost certainly his.

What exactly did Hall know? He obviously knew enough to mark his target out, to history, as Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. But was the word going around that his wife, the Countess of Oxford, conceived two children in his absence? Exaggeration is, after all, a staple of satire. Never so much, however, as of gossip.

There is much more. But the present point is that saying Jonson, Marston, Hall, etc., knew that Edward de Vere was Shakespeare describes only a small number of people that we can say with such certainty knew. It is important that we state evidence no more “coded” into texts than the common tropes of satire or the rules granted by the playwrights of London governing the (highly informative) War of the Theaters to which Jonson’s Poetaster belonged.

More generally, statements presenting theories of the Elizabethan court as undeniable certainties need evidence as well. It is by no means certain that Queen Elizabeth knew the identity of Shakespeare. It is highly likely that his works as a playwright were not known to her until 1598 when he was revealed to have authored certain plays.

Elizabeth’s court, for all its informants, did not “surely know” the playwright of every public play and the content.[4] It is by no means a matter of  course that anyone other than a nobleman would have been severely punished by the court for writing The Tragedie of King Richard the Second, as is commonly asserted. This because it is not clear that anyone at court knew who had written it. Furthermore, it is not clear that the offensive passages were included in the initial performances[5] which were presented over a decade before the play was first published and later famously performed for the members of the Essex Rebellion. Therefore, lack of evidence of public punishment is not circumstantial evidence for the court knowing Edward had written the play.

The question as to who knew what is fascinating and important. Too much so to answer it by a comparison of numbers of page-clicks.

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[1] Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/

[2] Capulet, Capulet and Parolles https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LLDM91P

[3] bury-ed

[4] There is plenty of evidence, on the other hand, to support that officers did know the plays that appeared at the early Blackfriars theater.

[5] The state of the 1597 First Quarto of Richard II does, however, make it clear that the offensive passages almost certainly existed before that publication.

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• King’s Place: home of the Earl and Countess of Oxford, 1596-1604. November 10, 2020. “In 1596, Elizabeth Trentham received King’s Place, in Hackney, from the estate of one Sir Rowland Hayward. She and her husband, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, moved in shortly afterward.”
• Shakespeare and Painter’s Palace of Pleasure. May 19, 2020. “…there is no richer source for clues to who was Shakespeare.”
• What About Edward de Vere’s Twelfth Night of 1600/01? January 28, 2020. “Leslie Hotson, who brought the Orsino-Orsino coincidence to the attention of the Nevillians seems to have made one particular mistake that is all to our point.”
• A Most Curious Account of the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth I: April 28, 1603.  April 28, 2019.  “Once it was clear that James I would face no serious challenges, Cecil and the others could begin to give attention to the matter of the Queen’s funeral.”
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
• Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.