Virtual Grub Street: The Playwright Who Wrote "Thomas of Woodstock or Richard II, Part 1."

First we should say that neither Thomas of Woodstock nor Richard II, Part 1 is the original name of the play. The single surviving copy is a manuscript bound together with British Library manuscripts catalogued as “Egerton 1994”. The title page and last page of the manuscript are missing. No entry in any document has yet provided a title or an author. The working title which has been adopted is entirely apt.

The manuscript seems for various reasons to be the work of a scribe. Minor additions and changes have been been made in differing hands and inks. I will be referring here to the transcription in the Keller edition of the play in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch of 1899¹

Since the discovery of the manuscript, there has been an ongoing debate as to the author and the date of composition. MacDonald P. Jackson has done computer analysis which he asserts shows Samuel Rowley to be the author.² Michael Egan (a fellow Oxfordian) had already staked a claim to Shakespeare himself as author.

Egan published an insightful reply — “Did Samuel Rowley Write Thomas Of Woodstock?” — detailing the weaknesses of Jackson's method. Those who have read my various essays on computer analyses know that I find most fail due to the researchers' complete lack of background in Elizabethan and Jacobin literature and theater. Jackson's is certainly no exception.

On the other hand, traditional scholars share a weakness that is all to the point here. Almost everyone in the field has studied Shakespeare's vocabulary, grammar, style, etc., to the nth degree, but have given no similar attention to the other playwrights of the time. Every play suspected to be by or influenced by Shakespeare tests out as more or less “a play by Shakespeare”. If it compares to a lesser degree it becomes an “early play,” a play transcribed by a publisher's agent in the crowd during a performance, or an old play by an anonymous other that Shakespeare rewrote until it was “Shakespearean,” etc.

Every other play is just an Elizabethan/Jacobin play with generic Elizabethan/Jacobin traits. The reading list being overwhelming, and the headline value so low, it is foregone altogether. There is only Shakespeare or not-Shakespeare. Other attributions are carried over from the 19^th and early 20^th century findings or remain unsettled.

In the play Thomas of Woodstock, there are clear moments of imitation of scenes from plays by Shakespeare. Egan has properly noted them. And he is entirely correct to point out that Rowley did not have sufficient talent to write the masterly Thomas of Woodstock.

Jackson's Elizabethan/Jacobin computer database has properly noted similarities between what is quantifiable in the style of Woodstock and Rowley's When you see me, You know me. But neither he nor his computer can “see” differences of talent. Computers are entirely dependent upon being able to translate quality (analogue, in this instance talent) into quantity (digital, in this instance a mathematical equation). The “wonder” of computer analysis is supposed to be that context doesn't matter. Math is math.

On the other hand, humans are notoriously poor at assigning subjective qualities such as talent. They must spend many years trying on pair after pair of scholarly spectacles in order to find a pair that more or less brings those qualities into focus. The adjustment for bias is particularly difficult.

What both scholars and computers have been blind to now for well above 100 years are the facts that: 1) authors often have tells that uniquely identify them, and 2) Elizabethans took God's name in vain a lot: cursed a lot. We don't even think of their curses as being offensive any longer. They have become quaint.

Ods bodkins, for example: we no longer know that it is the common contraction of “god's body-kins” i.e. “Upon god's little body”. Kin being a diminutive suffix it means not only “little” but “reduced, broken”. The phrase is an oath upon the crucified body of Christ. Zounds (Ods 'ounds, 'Sounds), is an oath upon Christ's wounds. 'Sblud is an oath upon the blood of Christ. When Robin exclaimed to Batman on the old television series, “Gadzooks Batman!,” he was unknowingly swearing an oath on God's hooks, the Tudor word for finger/toe nails.³

As it happens, characters in Thomas of Woodstock swear oaths a lot. More than in the plays of any other playwright of quality of the times. All of the plays of the author of Woodstock have the same characteristic until a particularly shocking moment when the trait utterly disappears from all of his future plays. Together with a number of other characteristics, unique but not quite as unique, they identify him as the author of the anonymous play The Merry Devil of Edmonton, with its many close references to Shakespeare's Falstaff plays, (in particular, The Merry Wives of Windsor) which I have presented in my Edward de Vere's Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff .⁴

The tell is not simply that his characters swear oaths a lot but that one oath is this author's favorite to the point that it is sworn more than all of the others combined: 'Sfoot (“upon god's foot”)⁵. Here, in Woodstock, the scribe writes it “foote”.

Foote our deuisses heere are licke iewells kept in casketts... Foote, 'tis my lord, the duke!... Foot, vrge our suite agayne , he will forgitt it else !... Foote, what neede you care what the world talkes ? You still retayne the name of kinge,...⁶

George Chapman clearly thought this oath was particularly amusing. It is everywhere throughout his plays. When a reader finds this oath everywhere in an Elizabethan/Jacobin play it should immediately invoke the name “George Chapman” — a playwright almost as talented many times as Shakespeare.

Next: Why and When Did the Playwright George Chapman Give Off Cursing?

1Keller, Wolfgang. Richard II . Erster Teil. Ein Drama aus Shakespeares Zeit (1899). Jahrbuch Der Deutschen Shakespeare- Gesellschaft, XXXIV. 3-121.

2Macdonald P. Jackson, "Shakespeare's Richard II and the Anonymous Thomas of Woodstock", Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England14 (2001) 17–65.

3Thus the saying: “Don't let her get her hooks into you!”

4See my Edward de Vere's Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff (2017) for more on Churchyard and The Merry Devil. https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Veres-Retainer-Thomas-Churchyard-ebook/dp/B077LVLXY2/

5Rowley's play does use “'Sfoot” twice among general cursing. It also includes partial matches with other of Chapman's characteristic traits.

6Keller, Richard II. III.i.77-8, III.ii.166, IV.i.117, IV.i.136-7.

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.