Virtual Grub Street: First Folio Prima Facie.

My Facebook groups being public, and requiring only courtesy (which requirement is as often as not ignored in Authorship matters), they have lately become the site of old style Shakespeare Authorship combat. Comments have been posted, claims made, chests thumped, insults screeched like so much scat flying in a monkey house.

I’ve chosen on a few rare occasions in the past to indulge in the experience. The old rules in such matters remained the same. Expect insults. Reply with strong and genuine arguments, nonetheless. If you are an Oxfordian, expect to be portrayed as mentally deficient and worse. Don’t try to reply in kind. Hours of name-calling is an utter waste of time.

The First Folio has woven through recent debates. Largely, on the Oxfraudian side of arguments. Because Oxfordians can be depended upon to reply with ciphers and conspiracies thus serving as easy prey. Such ciphers and conspiracy theories 1) tend to be entirely conjecture and 2) make it easy to portray proponents as nut-cases to lookers on.

Somewhere on the Oxfraudian side of all of the hundreds of recent comments, in three very active comment threads, the idea of the First Folio as prima facie evidence was mentioned. Neither side, as the rule, knows much about the legal concept of prima facie. Oxfraudians think it is much stronger than it is. Oxfordians think it can be overcome with theories relating to the front matter that, at best, lack admissible evidentiary value.

That the First Folio presents the Stratford man as the author of the plays is simply true. Oxfordians do themselves no favors to cry out in long-suffering pain that it is not so. The Stratford man was a shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men — later, during the reign of James I, the King’s Men. These two facts establish a strong prima facie case.

These facts might seem an insuperable case. Essentially, the Stratfordian camp stands on them as sufficient in themselves. Many legal cases have been won on less. But the case before us is by no means such a case.

The fact that there was an earlier project, partially completed, to publish a collection of Shakespeare’s plays, immediately introduces new evidence. In a legal matter that evidence would be required to receive equal consideration. Of course, it is every bit as important to claim no evidentiary value whatsoever for any mystical mathematical arrangement of the letters and/or punctuation marks on any of the pages of that earlier collection — no matter that such an arrangement might seem as obvious as the pimples on Andrew Aguecheek’s cheek — or to claim a prima facie relationship of any (or none) of the members of the King’s Men with the plays in the collection.

On the other hand, that the publisher of the earlier collected plays became involved in the famous Shakespeare First Folio — above noted prima facie to the case — being the immediate source of some of its texts, cannot be declared a mere coincidence unworthy of investigation. There are a great many facts it is clear that do not begin to satisfy the Stratfordian myth.

The fact that William Herbert, Lord Chamberlain to James I, issued an order to the Stationers, while the earlier collected works was in-progress, prohibiting publication of any play belonging to the King’s Men, then, is also countervailing evidence. They were to license no more plays owned by the King’s Men for publication. Should they know of any outstanding licenses for King’s plays they were to remove permission to publish.

This, of course, is the same William Herbert to whom the Shakespeare First Folio was dedicated. This was the same William Herbert that had the initials identical to those to which Shake-Speares Sonnets (1609) was dedicated. This is the same William Herbert who had been engaged to the daughter of Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, and whose brother was married to another of De Vere’s daughters.

This, of course, was the same William Herbert within whose social circle Ben Jonson was a regular guest and who presented Jonson with a personal gift of 20l. worth of books each New Year.[1] Ben, as you surely know, was a diligent social climber intent upon pleasing his betters.

I quote the introduction from my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof. (2013, 2015).

What happened next is preserved for history in a 1637 letter written by Philip Herbert, then Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, and Lord Chamberlain to Charles I.

Whereas complaint was heretofore presented to my dear brother and predecessor, by his majesties servants, the players, that some of the company of printers and stationers had procured, published and printed, diverse of their books and comedyes and tragedyes, chronicle historyes and the like, which they had (for the special service of his majestye and for their own use) bought and provided at very dear and high-rates…. And thereupon the master and warden of the company of printers and stationers were advised by my brother to take notice thereof, and to take order for the stay of any further impression of any of the playes or interludes of his majesties servants without their consents;…[2]

And I link here to one of my more thorough nutshell descriptions of the earlier collected plays of Shakespeare in my essay “How the Infamous 1619 Shakespeare Quartos Became the 1619 Shakespeare Quartos.” [link].

I wish, for the sake of my Oxfordian fellows, that the documented historical facts I’ve cited here as evidence that clearly and completely re-contextualizes the First Folio prima facie so dear to Stratford, would receive as honest and forthright a response as I have made above. I realize that such is unlikely, and that, in the face of continued monkey house methods, those fellows will be left to wonder “What’s the use?” There is, after all, no non-partisan judge whose authority either side accepts.

I can only counsel patience. Stay tuned. We’ll get there.

[1] Drummond, William. Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden Anno. 1619. (1842). 22. “Every first day of the new year he had 20lb. sent him from the Earl of Pembrok to buy bookes.”

[2] Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof. (2013, 2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/. iii. Citing Malone, Edmond, “Prolegomena.” The Plays of William Shakespeare, Volume 3 (1821). 160n.