Lord Burghley to Sir Robert Cecil. December 2, 1594. The Wedding of Elizabeth de Vere.

I thank you for sending to me the copy of her Majestie's letters to the French Kyng, assuring myself that there could no such marye come out of any knuckles but of hers that in all graces by nature, by calling, by long experience, is of such perfection as none can attayn unto. In this letter, though I knolledg my weaknes to judg therof, yet I see every sentence full of matter of great vallue, in a princely kyndness to a Kyng very acceptable, in congratulating his escape very comfortable, in advising him how to preserve his person more carefull than she is for herself, otherwise than she leaveth all to the care of God, in advise further to remove the nursery of his common enemies, without relenting to contrary counsells, so wisely and religiously, as of all these thyngs I am sure no secretary nor orator could so lyvely express her princely mynd.

For her hope to have me dance, I must have a longer tyme to leran to go, but I will be ready in mynd to dance with my hart, when I shall behold her favorable disposition to do such honor to her mayd, for the old man's sake. I wish her Majesty would send some treasure into Irland, and that her Treasurer might see to the orderly expence therof better than his clerks have done these six yeres.

Your loving father,

W. BURGHLEY.

The argument of my letter hath tempted my hand to wryte thus much.¹

Our source informs us that this letter alludes “to the preparations for the marriage of Lord Burghley's granddaughter, Elizabeth Vere, eldest daughter of Anne Countess of Oxford, with William Earl of Derby.” Robert Cecil is managing the Treasury more and more as Burghley's “gout” keeps him more often and longer abed.² He exchanges frequent letters for his father's advice and approval on key topics. Personal matters lighten the fare. For this reason we can look over the shoulders at the daily lives of the major players in Queen Elizabeth's Court.

Here we learn that the Queen has sent her regards, through Robert's previous letter, teasing the decrepit Burghley that she expects to see him dance at the wedding. His heart, he replies, will dance because the Queen will be greatly honoring the wedding with her attendance. Such small (and sometimes not so small) tokens of affection regularly pass between them at this point in their lives, Burghley working remotely from his house on the Strand (occasionally in the country, at Theobalds) and the Queen in whichever of her palaces she has chosen to reside.

Another letter to Burghley has taught us that the Earl of Derby had proposed to Elizabeth Vere in May of the year.³ The formal betrothal was also postponed — in this instance until June.⁴ The authorship implications of Derby's various situations are largely unrealized as of yet, three of which gave us plays by Shakespeare.

Yet several other letters between Robert Sidney and his wife inform us that the wedding was planned for January 19, 1594/5, and, for some reason, postponed to exactly a week following.

By January 26: Preparations for the marriage of the Earl of Derby. The marriage was originally to have taken place on January 19. Sir Robert Sidney, Jan 9, Greenwich, ‘to my most dear wife, the Lady Sidney’: ‘I cannot possibly be with you till after my Lord of Derby’s marriage, which will be on Sunday come sennight [Jan 19]’; [January]: ‘My head is so full of a masque that the Queen and certain idle lords, my friends, have brought me into... This masque will be chargeable’; Monday [Jan 20]: ‘Sweetheart. Our masque is put off till Sunday next and the marriage also’. Sidney spent £500. [Hannay, 64-5].⁵

I have yet to discover the reason.

I have made it clear, in my Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof⁶, that I subscribe to the theory that Edward de Vere wrote A Midsummer's Night Dream for the wedding reception. Stanley-ites assign it to the bridegroom, William Stanley, who they believe wrote the works of Shaksepeare. The partisans for each of the candidates for alternative authorship claim the play for their own.

What is particularly curious is that many traditional Stratfordian scholars, for some 200 years now, have asserted that Shakspere of Stratford wrote the play for the same wedding. Also that it was a masque or distinctively masque-like. Karl Elze provides just one of a number of excerpts to this effect in the New Variorum of the play:

... we feel throughout the play that like the masques it was originally intended for a private entertainment. The resemblance to the masques is still heightened by the completely lyrical, not to say operatic stamp, of the Midsummer Night's Dream. There is no action which develops of internal necessity, and the poet has here, as Gervinus says, ' completely laid aside his great art of finding a motive for every action.' ... In a word, exactly as in the masques, everything is an occurrence and a living picture rather than a plot, and the delineation of the characters is accordingly given only with slight touches...⁷

There is a strong possibility, then, that Sir Robert Sidney danced in the first performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream while the Earl of Oxford, Baron Burghley and the Queen looked on. Or did Oxford, perhaps, participate as well?

1 Queen Elizabeth and her times, II. 440-1.

2 See my “What caused the death of William Cecil, Baron Burghley, in 1598?” Virtual Grub Street, August 06, 2023. https://vgs-pbr-reviews.blogspot.com/2023/08/what-caused-death-of-william-cecil.html

3 Titherley, A. W. Shakespeare's Identity: William Stanley, 6th Earl Of Derby (1592). 24. “...on 9th May the Countess Alice wrote a letter to Sir Robert Cecil, Elizabeth’s Uncle, sarcastically wishing his niece a better husband than William...”

4 Titherley citing Lafranc, Abel. Sous Le Masque de William Shakespeare (1919). The reason they give, however, is ludicrous.

5 Folgerpedia, 1595. 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).

6 Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere was Shakespeare: at long last the proof. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543136257/

7 Furness, Horace Howard. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: A Midsommer Nights Dreame (1895). Citing K. Elze (Essays, &c, trans. by L. Dora Schmitz, p. 32, 1874).

Also at Virtual Grub Street:

• Invention in a Noted Weed: the Poetry of William Shakespeare. September 21, 2024. “The coward conquest of a wretches knife,...”

• The Sonnets of Shakespeare: Sonnet 108. Edward de Vere to his son, Henry. “That may expresse my love, or thy deare merit?”

• 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 Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.